From Euler's play with infinite series to the anomalous magnetic moment

TL;DR

This paper traces Euler's early work on infinite series and zeta functions, highlighting their unexpected relevance to modern physics and number theory, especially in calculating the electron's magnetic moment.

Contribution

It connects historical mathematical developments with contemporary research on periods, multiple zeta values, and their applications in quantum physics.

Findings

Euler's work on zeta functions relates to the anomalous magnetic moment.

The ring of periods includes multiple zeta values relevant to Feynman amplitudes.

Historical series and functions have modern implications in physics and number theory.

Abstract

During a first St. Petersburg period Leonhard Euler, in his early twenties, became interested in the Basel problem: summing the series of inverse squares (posed by Pietro Mengoli in mid 17th century). In the words of Andre Weil (1989) "as with most questions that ever attracted his attention, he never abandoned it". Euler introduced on the way the alternating "phi-series", the better converging companion of the zeta function, the first example of a polylogarithm at a root of unity. He realized - empirically! - that odd zeta values appear to be new (transcendental?) numbers. It is amazing to see how, a quarter of a millennium later, the numbers Euler played with, "however repugnant" this game might have seemed to his contemporary lovers of the "higher kind of calculus", reappeared in the analytic calculation of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron, the most precisely calculated and measured physical quantity. Mathematicians, inspired by ideas of Grothendieck, are reviving the dream of Galois of uncovering a group structure in the ring of periods (that includes the multiple zeta values) - applied to the study of Feynman amplitudes.