Wiener Integration for Quantum Systems: A Unified Approach to the Feynman-Kac formula

We consider quantum phase-space dynamics using Wigner's representation of quantum mechanics. We stress the usefulness of the integral form for the description of Wigner's phase-space current~$\bm J$ as an alternative to the popular Moyal bracket. The integral form brings out the symmetries between momentum and position representations of quantum mechanics, is numerically stable, and allows us to perform some calculations using elementary integrals instead of Groenewold star p...

The overcompleteness of the coherent states basis leads to a multiplicity of representations of Feynman's path integral. These different representations, although equivalent quantum mechanically, lead to different semiclassical limits. Two such semiclassical formulas were derived in \cite{Bar01} for the two corresponding path integral forms suggested by Klauder and Skagerstan in \cite{Klau85}. Each of these formulas involve trajectories governed by a different classical repre...

In this paper, we survey recent progress on the constructive theory of the Feynman operator calculus. (The theory is constructive in that, operators acting at different times, actually commute.) We first develop an operator version of the Henstock-Kurzweil integral, and a new Hilbert space that allows us to construct the elementary path integral in the manner originally envisioned by Feynman. After developing our time-ordered operator theory we extend a few of the important t...

Motivated by application to quantum physics, anticommuting analogues of Wiener measure and Brownian motion are constructed. The corresponding Ito integrals are defined and the existence and uniqueness of solutions to a class of stochastic differential equations is established. This machinery is used to provide a Feynman-Kac formula for a class of Hamiltonians. Several specific examples are considered.

We discuss path integrals for quantum mechanics with a potential which is a perturbation of the upside-down oscillator. We express the path integral (in the real time) by the Wiener measure. We obtain the Feynman integral for perturbations which are the Fourier-Laplace transforms of a complex measure and for polynomials of the fotm $x^{4n}$ and $x^{4n+2}$ (where $n$ is a natural number). We extend the method to quantum field theory (QFT) with complex scaled spatial coordinate...

we will show the existence and uniqueness of a real-time, time-sliced Feynman path integral for quantum systems with vector potential. Our formulation of the path integral will be derived on the $L^2$ transition probability amplitude via improper Riemann integrals. Our formulation will hold for vector potential Hamiltonian for which its potential and vector potential each carries at most a finite number of singularities and discontinuities.

This paper gives a rigorous interpretation of a Feynman path integral on a Riemannian manifold M with non-positive sectional curvature. A $L^2$ Riemannian metric $G_P$ is given on the space of piecewise geodesic paths $H_P(M)$ adapted to the partition $P$ of $[0,1]$, whence a finite-dimensional approximation of Wiener measure is developed. It is proved that, as $mesh(P) \to 0$, the approximate Wiener measure converges in a $L^1$ sense to the measure $e^{-\frac{2 + \sqrt{3}}{2...

We obtain direct, finite, descriptions of a renormalized quantum mechanical system with no reference to ultraviolet cutoffs and running coupling constants, in both the Hamiltonian and path integral pictures. The path integral description requires a modification to the Wiener measure on continuous paths that describes an unusual diffusion process wherein colliding particles occasionally stick together for a random interval of time before going their separate ways.

Feynman's Lagrangian path integral was an outgrowth of Dirac's vague surmise that Lagrangians have a role in quantum mechanics. Lagrangians implicitly incorporate Hamilton's first equation of motion, so their use contravenes the uncertainty principle, but they are relevant to semiclassical approximations and relatedly to the ubiquitous case that the Hamiltonian is quadratic in the canonical momenta, which accounts for the Lagrangian path integral's "success". Feynman also inv...

This paper discusses several methods for describing the dynamics of open quantum systems, where the environment of the open system is infinite-dimensional. These are purifications, phase space forms, master equation and liouville equation forms. The main contribution is in using Feynman-Kac formalisms to describe the infinite-demsional components.