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