English

A covariant fermionic path integral for scalar Langevin processes with multiplicative white noise

Statistical Mechanics 2026-02-20 v1

Abstract

We revisit the construction of the fermionic path-integral representation of overdamped scalar Langevin processes with multiplicative white noise, focusing on the covariance of the generating functional under non-linear changes of variables. We identify the transformations of the auxiliary (commuting and anticommuting) variables that ensure covariance under such transformations. The subtleties induced by the non-differentiable trajectories of the stochastic dynamics are encoded in the fermionic statistics. Upon integrating out the auxiliary variables, we derive the Onsager-Machlup formulation, which agrees with the one recently obtained using a higher-order discretization scheme. In contrast to the latter, the construction proposed here is formulated directly in continuous time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.17398,
  title  = {A covariant fermionic path integral for scalar Langevin processes with multiplicative white noise},
  author = {Daniel G. Barci and Leticia F. Cugliandolo and Zochil González Arenas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.17398},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

24 pages, no figures