Lectures on differential equations for Feynman integrals

Abstract

Over the last year significant progress was made in the understanding of the computation of Feynman integrals using differential equations (DE). These lectures give a review of these developments, while not assuming any prior knowledge of the subject. After an introduction to DE for Feynman integrals, we point out how they can be simplified using algorithms available in the mathematical literature. We discuss how this is related to a recent conjecture for a canonical form of the equations. We also discuss a complementary approach that is based on properties of the space-time loop integrands, and explain how the ideas of leading singularities and d-log representations can be used to find an optimal basis for the DE. Finally, as an application of these ideas we show how single-scale integrals can be bootstrapped using the Drinfeld associator of a DE.