An Introduction to Resurgence, Trans-Series and Alien Calculus

TL;DR

This paper provides an overview of resurgence theory, including mathematical tools like trans-series and alien calculus, illustrating how they enable extraction of non-perturbative physics from perturbative expansions.

Contribution

It introduces the mathematical framework of resurgence, alien calculus, and trans-series in a physics context, highlighting their role in understanding non-perturbative phenomena.

Findings

Resurgent functions are crucial in physical problems.

Alien calculus helps extract non-perturbative information.

Morse theory applied to path integrals explains resurgence in physics.

Abstract

In these notes we give an overview of different topics in resurgence theory from a physics point of view, but with particular mathematical flavour. After a short review of the standard Borel method for the resummation of asymptotic series, we introduce the class of simple resurgent functions, explaining their importance in physical problems. We define the Stokes automorphism and the alien derivative and discuss these objects in concrete examples using the notion of trans-series expansion. With all the tools introduced, we see how resurgence and alien calculus allow us to extract non-perturbative physics from perturbation theory. To conclude, we apply Morse theory to a toy model path integral to understand why physical observables should be resurgent functions.