Oliver Schlotterer, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics/Perimeter Institute
"The number theory of string amplitudes"
In this talk, scattering amplitudes in string theory are explored as a laboratory for modern number-theoretic concepts including multiple zeta values and their elliptic generalizations. I will review the description of string amplitudes through moduli-space integrals over punctured Riemann surfaces. Since open strings give rise to surfaces with punctures ordered along their boundaries, one is naturally led to the iterated-integral representation of (elliptic) multiple zeta values. Closed strings in turn are associated with integrals over the sphere and the torus which only involve the so-called "single-valued" subset of multiple zeta values.
MC 5417