Numberphile video about our recent paper: Does -1/12 protect us from infinity?

Tony has filmed a video for Numberphile (embedded below) discussing some of the ideas in our recent paper that connects analytic number theory, divergent series, and divergent integrals in perturbative quantum field theory (I also wrote a bit about our paper here). Tony does a brilliant job at elucidating some of the beautiful results of our first paper, including a discussion about one of my absolute favourite regulators in relation to the astonishing formula . It became a bit of a joke between us, as I would always label this “the astonishing regulator” in our working notes. In fact, I think in the first draft of our paper this was the title I gave the relevant section. I think it is so beautiful. There are many interesting things to say about this particular choice of going beyond the immediate observation of its nature as a damped oscillator, which includes a related subclass of other remarkable cutoff functions. I look forward to sharing some bits in a future post.

In the video, Tony also shares a few comments describing our excitement about ongoing and future research. And yes, indeed, there is a sniff of something stringy ;)