Quantum electrodynamics

In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. The set of techniques known as “resurgence” points toward an escape.

The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of the vacuum.

Einstein’s description of curved space-time doesn’t easily mesh with a universe made up of quantum wavefunctions. Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll discusses the quest for quantum gravity with host Steven Strogatz.

Even in an incomplete state, quantum field theory is the most successful physical theory ever discovered. Nathan Seiberg, one of its leading architects, talks about the gaps in QFT and how mathematicians could fill them.

In three towering papers, a team of mathematicians has worked out the details of Liouville quantum field theory, a two-dimensional model of quantum gravity.

The accelerating effort to understand the mathematics of quantum field theory will have profound consequences for both math and physics.

Renormalization has become perhaps the single most important advance in theoretical physics in 50 years.

In the late 1940s, Richard Feynman invented a visual tool for simplifying particle calculations that forever changed theoretical physics.

Richard Feynman's famous diagrams weren’t just a way to do calculations. They represented a deep shift in thinking about how the universe is put together.