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

Feynman proposed a postulate or a method of quantization in his celebrated paper in 1948. Applying Feynman's postulate to temporally continuous quantum measurements of the positions of particles, Mensky proposed the restricted Feynman path integrals for continuous quantum measurements after phenomenological considerations. Our aim in the present paper is to give a rigorous proof that Mensky's restricted Feynman path integrals emerge out of the Feynman's postulate under a simp...

Both Bohmian mechanics, a version of quantum mechanics with trajectories, and Feynman's path integral formalism have something to do with particle paths in space and time. The question thus arises how the two ideas relate to each other. In short, the answer is, path integrals provide a re-formulation of Schroedinger's equation, which is half of the defining equations of Bohmian mechanics. I try to give a clear and concise description of the various aspects of the situation.

Weak coherent states share many properties of the usual coherent states, but do not admit a resolution of unity expressed in terms of a local integral. They arise e.g. in the case that a group acts on an inadmissible fiducial vector. Motivated by the recent Affine Quantum Gravity Program, the present article studies the path integral representation of the affine weak coherent state matrix elements of the unitary time-evolution operator. Since weak coherent states do not admit...

The complex exponential weighting of Feynman formalism is seen to happen at the classical level. (Finiteness of) Feynman path integral formula is suspected then to appear as a consistency condition for the existence of certain Dirac measures over functional spaces.

In this work we consider a suitable generalization of the Feynman path integral on a specific class of Riemannian manifolds consisting of compact Lie groups with bi-invariant Riemannian metrics. The main tools we use are the Cartan development map, the notion of oscillatory integral, and the Chernoff approximation theorem. We prove that, for a class of functions of a dense subspace of the relevant Hilbert space, the Feynman map produces the solution of the Schr\"odinger equat...

We propose a new rigorous time-slicing construction of the phase space Path Integrals for propagators both in Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory for a fairly general class of quantum observables (e.g. the Schroedinger hamiltonians with smooth scalar potentials of any power growth). Moreover we allow time-dependent hamiltonians and a great variety of discretizations, in particular, the standard, Weyl, and normal ones.

The algebraic approach to quantum mechanics has been vital to the development of quantum theory since its inception, and it has evolved into a mathematically rigorous $C^\ast$-algebraic formulation of the theory's axioms. Conversely, the functional approach in the form of Feynman path integrals is far from mathematically rigorous: Nevertheless, path integrals provide an equally valid and useful formulation of the axioms of quantum mechanics. The two approaches can be merged b...

We express the unitary time evolution in non-relativistic regularized quantum electrodynamics at zero and positive temperature by a Feynman integral defined in terms of a complex Brownian motion. An average over the quantum electromagnetic field determines the form of the quantum mechanics in an environment of a quantum black body radiation. In this non-perturbative formulation of quantum electrodynamics we prove the existence of the classical limit $\hbar \rightarrow 0$.We e...

A fully regulated definition of Feynman's path integral is presented here. The proposed re-formulation of the path integral coincides with the familiar formulation whenever the path integral is well-defined. In particular, it is consistent with respect to lattice formulations and Wick rotations, i.e., it can be used in Euclidean and Minkowskian space-time. The path integral regularization is introduced through the generalized Kontsevich-Vishik trace, that is, the extension of...

In this survey, our aim is to emphasize the main known limitations to the use of Wigner measures for Schrodinger equations. After a short review of successful applications of Wigner measures to study the semi-classical limit of solutions to Schrodinger equations, we list some examples where Wigner measures cannot be a good tool to describe high frequency limits. Typically, the Wigner measures may not capture effects which are not negligible at the pointwise level, or the prop...