This up-to-date introduction to Griffiths' theory of period maps and period domains focusses on algebraic, group-theoretic and differential geometric aspects. Starting with an explanation of Griffiths' basic theory, the authors go on to introduce spectral sequences and Koszul complexes that are used to derive results about cycles on higher-dimensional algebraic varieties such as the Noether–Lefschetz theorem and Nori's theorem. They explain differential geometric methods, leading up to proofs of Arakelov-type theorems, the theorem of the fixed part and the rigidity theorem. They also use Higgs bundles and harmonic maps to prove the striking result that not all compact quotients of period domains are Kähler. This thoroughly revised second edition includes a new third part covering important recent developments, in which the group-theoretic approach to Hodge structures is explained, leading to Mumford–Tate groups and their associated domains, the Mumford–Tate varieties and generalizations of Shimura varieties.

We present a systematic method to derive an ordinary differential equation for any Feynman integral, where the differentiation is with respect to an external variable. The resulting differential equation is of Fuchsian type. The method can be used within fixed integer space-time dimensions as well as within dimensional regularisation. We show that finding the differential equation is equivalent to solving a linear system of equations. We observe interesting factorisation properties of the D-dimensional Picard-Fuchs operator when D is specialised to integer dimensions.

We construct a map between Bloch's higher Chow groups and Deligne homology for smooth, complex quasiprojective varieties on the level of complexes. For complex projective varieties this results in a formula which generalizes at the same time the classical Griffiths Abel-Jacobi map and the Borel/Beilinson/Goncharov regulator type maps.

We solve the two-loop sunrise integral with unequal masses systematically to all orders in the dimensional regularisation parameter ε. In order to do so, we transform the system of differential equations for the master integrals to an ε-form. The sunrise integral with unequal masses depends on three kinematical variables. We perform a change of variables to standard coordinates on the moduli space M 1,3 of a genus one Riemann surface with three marked points. This gives us the solution as iterated integrals on M 1,3 . On the hypersurface τ = const our result reduces to elliptic polylogarithms. In the equal mass case our result reduces to iterated integrals of modular forms.

We derive a second-order differential equation for the two-loop sunrise graph in two dimensions with arbitrary masses. The differential equation is obtained by viewing the Feynman integral as a period of a variation of a mixed Hodge structure, where the variation is with respect to the external momentum squared. The fibre is the complement of an elliptic curve. From the fact that the first cohomology group of this elliptic curve is two-dimensional we obtain a second-order differential equation. This is an improvement compared to the usual way of deriving differential equations: Integration-by-parts identities lead only to a coupled system of four first-order differential equations.