From Möbius inversion to renormalisation

Although Möbius inversion originates in number theory, its standard
formulation, due to Rota, is in the setting of posets, where it is about
splitting of intervals. It has become a standard and widely used counting
device in combinatorics and application areas. The goal of the talk is to
show how a slight generalisation of the Möbius inversion principle can also
explain (the algebraic aspect of) one of the main approaches to
renormalisation of perturbative quantum field theories, the so-called BPHZ
renormalisation (after Bogoliubov, Parasiuk, Hepp, and Zimmerman), in the
Hopf-algebraic formulation due to Kreimer. In the talk, I will explain all
the words above. (In particular, no prior knowledge of physics is assumed.)

Dietary info: the talk does not contain category theory.