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Register a new userPath integrals in a multiply-connected configuration space (50 years after)
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Authors
Amaury Mouchet
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The proposal made 50 years ago by Schulman (1968), Laidlaw & Morette-DeWitt (1971) and Dowker (1972) to decompose the propagator according to the homotopy classes of paths was a major breakthrough: it showed how Feynman functional integrals opened a direct window on quantum properties of topological origin in the configuration space. This paper casts a critical look at the arguments brought by this series of papers and its numerous followers in an attempt to clarify the reason why the emergence of the unitary linear representation of the first homotopy group is not only sufficient but also necessary.
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The essence of the path integral method in quantum physics can be expressed in terms of two relations between unitary propagators, describing perturbations of the underlying system. They inherit the causal structure of the theory and its invariance properties under variations of the action. These relations determine a dynamical algebra of bounded operators which encodes all properties of the corresponding quantum theory. This novel approach is applied to non-relativistic particles, where quantum mechanics emerges from it. The method works also in interacting quantum field theories and sheds new light on the foundations of quantum physics.
Path integrals constitute powerful representations for both quantum and stochastic dynamics. Yet despite many decades of intensive studies, there is no consensus on how to formulate them for dynamics in curved space, or how to make them covariant with respect to nonlinear transform of variables. In this work, we construct rigorous and covariant formulations of time-slicing path integrals for quantum and classical stochastic dynamics in curved space. We first establish a rigorous criterion for correct time-slice actions of path integrals (Lemma 1). This implies the existence of infinitely many equivalent representations for time-slicing path integral. We then show that, for any dynamics with second order generator, all time-slice actions are asymptotically equivalent to a Gaussian (Lemma 2). Using these results, we further construct a continuous family of equivalent actions parameterized by an interpolation parameter $alpha in [0,1]$ (Lemma 3). The action generically contains a spurious drift term linear in $Delta boldsymbol x$, whose concrete form depends on $alpha$. Finally we also establish the covariance of our path-integral formalism, by demonstrating how the action transforms under nonlinear transform of variables. The $alpha = 0$ representation of time-slice action is particularly convenient because it is Gaussian and invariant, as long as $Delta boldsymbol x$ transforms according to Itos formula.
The roles of Lie groups in Feynmans path integrals in non-relativistic quantum mechanics are discussed. Dynamical as well as geometrical symmetries are found useful for path integral quantization. Two examples having the symmetry of a non-compact Lie group are considered. The first is the free quantum motion of a particle on a space of constant negative curvature. The system has a group SO(d,1) associated with the geometrical structure, to which the technique of harmonic analysis on a homogeneous space is applied. As an example of a system having a non-compact dynamical symmetry, the d-dimensional harmonic oscillator is chosen, which has the non-compact dynamical group SU(1,1) besides its geometrical symmetry SO(d). The radial path integral is seen as a convolution of the matrix functions of a compact group element of SU(1,1) on the continuous basis.
Bayesian estimation of a mixed quantum state can be approximated via maximum likelihood (MaxLike) estimation when the likelihood function is sharp around its maximum. Such approximations rely on asymptotic expansions of multi-dimensional Laplace integrals. When this maximum is on the boundary of the integration domain, as it is the case when the MaxLike quantum state is not full rank, such expansions are not standard. We provide here such expansions, even when this maximum does not belong to the smooth part of the boundary, as it is the case when the rank deficiency exceeds two. These expansions provide, aside the MaxLike estimate of the quantum state, confidence intervals for any observable. They confirm the formula proposed and used without precise mathematical justifications by the authors in an article recently published in Physical Review A.
We discuss the time-continuous path integration in the coherent states basis in a way that is free from inconsistencies. Employing this notion we reproduce known and exact results working directly in the continuum. Such a formalism can set the basis to develop perturbative and non-perturbative approximations already known in the quantum field theory community. These techniques can be proven useful in a great variety of problems where bosonic Hamiltonians are used.
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