Heat Kernel Renormalization on Manifolds with Boundary

Abstract

In the monograph Renormalization and Effective Field Theory, Costello made two major advances towards the mathematical formulation of quantum field theory. Firstly, he developed an inductive position space renormalization procedure for constructing effective field theories that is based on heat kernel regularization of the propagator. Secondly, he gave a rigorous formulation of quantum gauge theory within effective field theory that makes use of the BV formalism. In this work, we extend Costello's inductive renormalization procedure from manifolds without boundary to a class of manifolds with boundary. In addition, we reorganize the presentation of the preexisting material, filling in details and strengthening the results.