Related papers: Critical Review of Path Integral Formulation
The Feynman path integral plays a crucial role in quantum mechanics, offering significant insights into the interaction between classical action and propagators, and linking quantum electrodynamics (QED) with Feynman diagrams. However, the…
In quantum field theory the path integral is usually formulated in the wave picture, i.e., as a sum over field evolutions. This path integral is difficult to define rigorously because of analytic problems whose resolution may ultimately…
Efforts to give an improved mathematical meaning to Feynman's path integral formulation of quantum mechanics started soon after its introduction and continue to this day. In the present paper, one common thread of development is followed…
Perturbative quantum field theory usually uses second quantisation and Feynman diagrams. The worldline formalism provides an alternative approach based on first quantised particle path integrals, similar in spirit to string perturbation…
The path integral approach to quantum mechanics provides a method of quantization of dynamical systems directly from the Lagrange formalism. In field theory the method presents some advantages over Hamiltonian quantization. The Lagrange…
These lectures are intended as an introduction to the technique of path integrals and their applications in physics. The audience is mainly first-year graduate students, and it is assumed that the reader has a good foundation in quantum…
Path integrals are a central tool when it comes to describing quantum or thermal fluctuations of particles or fields. Their success dates back to Feynman who showed how to use them within the framework of quantum mechanics. Since then, path…
According to loop quantum gravity, matter fields must be quantized in a background independent manner. For scalar fields, such a background independent quantization is called polymer quantization and is inequivalent to the standard…
The Feynman path integral has revolutionized modern approaches to quantum physics. Although the path integral formalism has proven very successful and spawned several approximation schemes, the direct evaluation of real-time path integrals…
We give two novel proofs that the path integral and stochastic quantizations of generic scalar Euclidean quantum field theories are equivalent. Our proofs rely on Taylor interpolations indexed by forests, in the fashion of constructive…
The Feynman path integral of ordinary quantum mechanics is complexified and it is shown that possible integration cycles for this complexified integral are associated with branes in a two-dimensional A-model. This provides a fairly direct…
Starting from the canonical formalism of relativistic (timeless) quantum mechanics, the formulation of timeless path integral is rigorously derived. The transition amplitude is reformulated as the sum, or functional integral, over all…
Feynman path integrals are now a standard tool in quantum physics and their use in differential geometry leads to new mathematical insights. A logical treatment of quantum phenomena seems to require a sustained mathematical analysis of path…
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…
The alternative dynamics of loop quantum cosmology is examined by the path integral formulation. We consider the spatially flat FRW models with a massless scalar field, where the alternative quantization inherit more features from full loop…
We introduce configuration space path integrals for quantum fields interacting with classical fields. We show that this can be done consistently by proving that the dynamics are completely positive directly, without resorting to master…
The Feynman path integral does not allow a "one real path" interpretation, because amplitudes contribute to probabilities in a non-separable manner. The opposite extreme, "all paths happen", is not a useful or informative account. In this…
The Feynman path integral is defined over the space $\mathbb{R}^T$ of all possible paths; it has been a powerful tool to develop Quantum Mechanics. The absolute value of Feynman's integrand is not integrable, then Lebesgue integration…
An analysis of classical mechanics in a complex extension of phase space shows that a particle in such a space can behave in a way redolant of quantum mechanics; additional degrees of freedom permit 'tunnelling' without recourse to…
I offer some historical comments about the origins of Feynman's path integral approach, as an alternative approach to standard quantum mechanics. Looking at the interaction between Einstein and Feynman, which was mediated by Feynman's…