An algebraic formulation of the locality principle in renormalisation

Abstract: We study the mathematical structure underlying the concept of locality which lies at the heart of classical and quantum field theory, and develop a machinery used to preserve locality during the renormalisation procedure. Viewing renormalisation in the framework of Connes and Kreimer as the algebraic Birkhoff factorisation of characters on a Hopf algebra with values in a Rota-Baxter algebra, we build locality variants of these algebraic structures, leading to a locality variant of the algebraic Birkhoff factorisation. This provides an algebraic formulation of the conservation of locality while renormalising. As an application in the context of the Euler-Maclaurin formula on cones, we renormalise the exponential generating function which sums over the lattice points in convex cones. For a suitable multivariate regularisation, renormalisation from the algebraic Birkhoff factorisation amounts to composition by a projection onto holomorphic multivariate functions.