Renormalization is a collection of techniques in quantum field theory, the statistical

mechanics of fields, and the theory of self-similar geometric structures, that are used to
treat infinities arising in calculated quantities by altering values of quantities to
compensate for effects of their self-interactions. However, even if it were the case that
no infinities arise in loop diagrams in quantum field theory, it can be shown that
renormalization of mass and fields appearing in the original Lagrangian is necessary.
For example, a theory of the electron may begin by postulating a mass and charge.
However, in quantum field theory this electron is surrounded by a cloud of possibilities
of other virtual particles such as photons, which interact with the original electron.
Taking these interactions into account shows that the electron-system, in fact, behaves
as if it had a different mass and charge. Renormalization replaces the initially postulated
mass and charge with new numbers such that the observed mass and charge matches
those postulated initially. It is a remarkable, experimentally verified, and mathematically
proven fact that positrons and more massive particles like the proton with much
stronger interactions, or a more intense cloud of virtual particles, have exactly the same
observed charge.
Renormalization specifies relationships between parameters in the theory when the
parameters describing large distance scales differ from the parameters describing small
distances. Physically, the pileup of contributions from an infinity of scales involved in a
problem may then result in infinities. When describing space and time as a continuum,
certain statistical and quantum mechanical constructions are ill-defined. To define them,
this continuum limit—the removal of the "construction scaffolding" of lattices at various
scales—has to be taken carefully. Renormalization procedures are based on the
requirement that certain physical quantities are equal to the observed values.
Renormalization was first developed in quantum electrodynamics (QED) to make sense
of infinite integrals in perturbation theory. Initially viewed as a suspect provisional
procedure even by some of its originators, renormalization eventually was embraced as
an important and self-consistent actual mechanism of scale physics in several fields of
physics and mathematics.
Today, the point of view has shifted: on the basis of the breakthrough renormalization
group insights of Nikolay Bogolyubov and Kenneth Wilson, the focus is on variation
of physical quantities across contiguous scales, while distant scales are related to each
other through "effective" descriptions. All scales are linked in a broadly systematic way,
and the actual physics pertinent to each is extracted with the suitable specific
computational techniques appropriate for each. Wilson clarified which variables of a
system are crucial and which are redundant.
Renormalization is distinct from regularization, another technique to control infinities by
assuming the existence of new unknown physics at new scales.