A survey of the additive dilogarithm

Abstract

Borel's construction of the regulator gives an injective map from the algebraic $K$-groups of a number field to its Deligne-Beilinson cohomology groups. This has many interesting arithmetic and geometric consequences. The formula for the regulator is expressed in terms of the classical polyogarithm functions. In this paper, we give a survey of the additive dilogarithm and the several different versions of the weight two regulator in the infinitesimal setting. We follow a historical approach which we hope will provide motivation for the definitions and the constructions.