Related papers: Homotopy and Path Integrals
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…
In this paper I discuss by means of path integrals the quantum dynamics of a charged particle on the hyperbolic plane under the influence of an Aharonov-Bohm gauge field. The path integral can be solved in terms of an expansion of the…
The comparison map from bounded cohomology to singular cohomology plays an important role in the study of bounded cohomology theory and its applications. The vanishing and covering theorems of Gromov and Ivanov show interesting and useful…
We explore a new approach to the path integral for a latticized quantum theory. This talk is based on work with N. Khuri and H. Ren.
We describe various path homology theories constructed for a directed hypergraph. We introduce the category of directed hypergraphs and the notion of a homotopy in this category. Also, we investigate the functoriality and the homotopy…
Let M be a U(1) bundle over a smooth Riemann surface. I show that for Chern-Simons theory on M, with structure group G, the path integral is an integral over the space of G-connections on the Riemann surface involving characteristic classes…
Connections between homotopy theory and type theory have recently attracted a lot of attention, with Voevodsky's univalent foundations and the interpretation of Martin-Lof's identity types in Quillen model categories as some of the…
Homotopy type theory is a formal language for doing abstract homotopy theory -- the study of identifications. But in unmodified homotopy type theory, there is no way to say that these identifications come from identifying the path-connected…
The formulation of noncommutative quantum mechanics as a quantum system represented in the space of Hilbert-Schmidt operators is used to systematically derive, using the standard time slicing procedure, the path integral action for a…
Path integrals are a ubiquitous tool in theoretical physics. However, their use is sometimes hindered by the lack of control on various manipulations -- such as performing a change of the integration path -- one would like to carry out in…
The modular spaces are a family of polarizations of the Hilbert space that are based on Aharonov's modular variables and carry a rich geometric structure. We construct here, step by step, a Feynman path integral for the quantum harmonic…
Given a commutative ring $R$ and finitely generated ideal $I$, one can consider the classes of $I$-adically complete, $L_0^I$-complete and derived $I$-complete complexes. Under a mild assumption on the ideal $I$ called weak pro-regularity,…
Homotopy connectedness theorems for complex submanifolds of homogeneous spaces (sometimes referred to as theorems of Barth-Lefshetz type) have been established by a number of authors. Morse Theory on the space of paths lead to an elegant…
We study the relationship between quasihomotopy and path homotopy for Sobolev maps between manifolds. We employ singular integrals on manifolds to show that, in the critical exponent case, path homotopy implies quasihomotopy - and observe…
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…
We use the wrinkling theorem proven in Y. Eliashberg and N. Mishachev, "Wrinkling of smooth mappings and its applications - I", Invent. Math., 130(1997), 345-369, to fully describe the homotopy type of the space of S-immersions, i.e.…
We construct cohomology classes in the space of knots by considering a bundle over this space and "integrating along the fiber" classes coming from the cohomology of configuration spaces using a Pontrjagin-Thom construction. The bundle we…
We introduce a crossed module of piecewise linear surfaces and study the signature homomorphism, defined as the surface holonomy of a universal translation invariant $2$-connection. This provides a transform whereby surfaces are represented…
Quantization of multiply-connected spaces requires tools which take these spaces' global properties into account. Applying these tools exposes additional degrees of freedom. This was first realized in the Aharonov-Bohm effect, where this…
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…