Combinatorial and geometric aspects of Feynman graphs and Feynman integrals

The integrals associated to Feynman graphs must have been a source of frustration for particle physicists ever since. Indeed there is a delicate difference between being able to draw a Feynman graph and being able to compute the associated Feynman integral. Although perturbation theory has brought enormous breakthroughs, many physicists turned to more abstract developments in quantum field theory, looked for other ways to produce perturbational results, or left the field entirely. Nonetheless there is a significant number of physicists, computational and theoretical, who pursue the quest for concepts and algorithms to compute and understand those integrals to higher and higher orders. Their motivation is to help test the validity of the underlying physical theory. For a mathematician, Feynman graphs and their integrals provide a rich subject in their own right, independent of their computability. It was only recently though that the work of Bloch, Esnault and Kreimer has brought a growing interest of mathematicians from various disciplines to the subject. In fact it opened up a completely new direction of research: a motivic interpretation of Feynman graphs that unites their combinatorial, geometric and arithmetic aspects. This idea had been in the air for a while, based on computational results of Broadhurst and Kreimer, and on a theorem of Belkale and Brosnan related to a conjecture of Kontsevich about the generality of the underlying motives. A prerequisite for the motivic approach is a profound understanding of renormalization that was established less recently in a modern language by Connes and Kreimer. This dissertation studies the renormalization of Feynman graphs in position space using an adapted resolution of singularities, and makes two other contributions of mostly combinatorial nature to the subject. I hope this may serve as a reference for somebody who feels comfortable with the traditional position space literature and looks for a transition to the research of Bloch and Kreimer. (orig.)