The goal of the book is to use combinatorial techniques to solve fundamental physics problems, and vice-versa, to use theoretical physics techniques to solve combinatorial problems.

The authors aim to reinstate a spirit of philosophical enquiry in physics. They abandon the intuitive continuum concepts and build up constructively a combinatorial mathematics of process. This radical change alone makes it possible to calculate the coupling constants of the fundamental fields which OCo via high energy scattering OCo are the bridge from the combinatorial world into dynamics. The untenable distinction between what is OCyobservedOCO, or measured, and what is not, upon which current quantum theory is based, is not needed. If we are to speak of mind, this has to be present OCo albeit in primitive form OCo at the most basic level, and not to be dragged in at one arbitrary point to avoid the difficulties about quantum observation. There is a growing literature on information-theoretic models for physics, but hitherto the two disciplines have gone in parallel. In this book they interact vitally."

This book is based on the mini-workshop Renormalization, held in December 2006, and the conference Combinatorics and Physics, held in March 2007. Both meetings took place at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Mathematik in Bonn, Germany. Research papers in the volume provide an overview of applications of combinatorics to various problems, such as applications to Hopf algebras, techniques to renormalization problems in quantum field theory, as well as combinatorial problems appearing in the context of the numerical integration of dynamical systems, in noncommutative geometry and in quantum gravity. In addition, it contains several introductory notes on renormalization Hopf algebras, Wilsonian renormalization and motives.

New and striking results obtained in recent years from an intensive study of asymptotic combinatorics have led to a new, higher level of understanding of related problems: the theory of integrable systems, the Riemann-Hilbert problem, asymptotic representation theory, spectra of random matrices, combinatorics of Young diagrams and permutations, and even some aspects of quantum field theory.

The Nagoya 2000 International Workshop gathered together a group of scientists actively working in combinatorics, representation theory, special functions, number theory and mathematical physics, to acquaint the participants with some basic results in their fields and to discuss existing and possible interactions between the mentioned subjects. This volume constitutes the proceedings of the workshop. Contents: Vanishing Theorems and Character Formulas for the Hilbert Scheme of Points in the Plane (M Haiman); Exclusion Statistics and Chiral Partition Function (K Hikami); On the Spectrum of Dehn Twists in Quantum Teichmller Theory (R Kashaev); Introduction to Tropical Combinatorics (A Kirillov); Transition on Grothendieck Polynomials (A Lascoux); Generalized HAlder''s Theorem for Multiple Gamma Function (M Nishizawa); Quantum Calogero-Moser Models: Complete Integrability for All the Root Systems (R Sasaki); Simplification of Thermodynamic BetheOCoAnsatz Equations (M Takahashi); and other papers. Readership: Researchers and graduates in mathematical physics and combinatorics & graph theory."

This book explores combinatorial problems and insights in quantum field theory. It is not comprehensive, but rather takes a tour, shaped by the author’s biases, through some of the important ways that a combinatorial perspective can be brought to bear on quantum field theory. Among the outcomes are both physical insights and interesting mathematics. The book begins by thinking of perturbative expansions as kinds of generating functions and then introduces renormalization Hopf algebras. The remainder is broken into two parts. The first part looks at Dyson-Schwinger equations, stepping gradually from the purely combinatorial to the more physical. The second part looks at Feynman graphs and their periods. The flavour of the book will appeal to mathematicians with a combinatorics background as well as mathematical physicists and other mathematicians.

At the Summer School Saint Petersburg 2001, the main lecture courses bore on recent progress in asymptotic representation theory: those written up for this volume deal with the theory of representations of infinite symmetric groups, and groups of infinite matrices over finite fields; Riemann-Hilbert problem techniques applied to the study of spectra of random matrices and asymptotics of Young diagrams with Plancherel measure; the corresponding central limit theorems; the combinatorics of modular curves and random trees with application to QFT; free probability and random matrices, and Hecke algebras.