Mathematical reflections on locality (Women in Mathematics)

Abstract

Starting from the principle of locality in quantum field theory, which states that an object is influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings, we review some features of the notion of locality arising in physics and mathematics. We encode these in locality relations, given by symmetric binary relations, and locality morphisms, namely maps that factorise on products of pairs in the graph of such locality relations. We shall explain why this factorisation is a key property in the context of renormalisation. This survey talk is based on joint work with Li Guo and Bin Zhang.