Iberian Strings Meetings 

16/01/2017, 09:00 — 10:00 — Abreu Faro Amphitheatre
Inês Aniceto, Jagiellonian University Krakow

Asymptotics and Resurgence in String and Gauge Theories

The perturbative expansions of many physical quantities are divergent, and defined only as asymptotic series. It is well known that this divergence reflects the existence of nonperturbative contributions, such as instanton effects, which are not captured by a perturbative analysis. This connection between perturbative and nonperturbative sectors of a given physical observable can be systematically studied using the theory of resurgence, allowing us to construct a full non-perturbative solution from perturbative asymptotic data. In this lecture I will start by reviewing the essential role of resurgence theory in the description of the analytic solution behind an asymptotic series, and its relation to the so-called Stokes phenomena, phase transitions and ambiguity cancelations. I will then present the most recent applications of resurgence in the context of string and gauge theories.