Related papers: Trace anomalies and the string-inspired definition…
Path integrals for particles in curved spaces can be used to compute trace anomalies in quantum field theories, and more generally to study properties of quantum fields coupled to gravity in first quantization. While their construction in…
We write general one-loop anomalies of string field theory as path integrals on a torus for the corresponding nonlinear sigma model. This extends the work of Alvarez-Gaum\'e and Witten from quantum mechanics to two dimensions. Higher…
The 1-loop anomalies of a d-dimensional quantum field theory can be computed by evaluating the trace of the regulated path integral jacobian matrix, as shown by Fujikawa. In 1983, Alvarez-Gaum\'e and Witten observed that one can simplify…
I address and solve the natural problem of calculating the transverse current anomalies in quantum electrodynamics by means of the path-integral method. An explicitly divergent and regulator-dependent anomaly term is produced for the vector…
The worldline approach to Quantum Field Theory (QFT) allows to efficiently compute several quantities, such as one-loop effective actions, scattering amplitudes and anomalies, which are linked to particle path integrals on the circle. A…
I describe a new method for computing trace anomalies in quantum field theories which makes use of path-integrals for particles moving in curved spaces. After presenting the main ideas of the method, I discuss how it is connected to the…
We review the status and present range of applications of the ``string-inspired'' approach to perturbative quantum field theory. This formalism offers the possibility of computing effective actions and S-matrix elements in a way which is…
The perturbative path-integral gives a morphism of the (quantum) $A_{\infty }$ structure intrinsic to each quantum field theory, which we show explicitly on the basis of the homological perturbation. As is known, in the BV formalism, any…
The computation of anomalies in quantum field theory may be carried out by evaluating path integral Jacobians, as first shown by Fujikawa. The evaluation of these Jacobians can be cast in the form of a quantum mechanical problem, whose…
We show how to construct path integrals for quantum mechanical systems where the space of configurations is a general non-compact symmetric space. Associated with this path integral is a perturbation theory which respects the global…
We develop a general framework for quantum field theory on noncommutative spaces, i.e., spaces with quantum group symmetry. We use the path integral approach to obtain expressions for $n$-point functions. Perturbation theory leads us to…
zeta-regularized traces, resp. super-traces, are defined on a classical pseudo-differential operator A by: tr^Q(A):= f.p.tr(A Q^{-z})_{|_{z=0}}, resp. str^Q(A):= f.p.str(A Q^{-z})_{|_{z=0}}, where f.p. refers to the finite part and Q is an…
We study finite-dimensional integrals in a way that elucidates the mathematical meaning behind the formal manipulations of path integrals occurring in quantum field theory. This involves a proper understanding of how Wick's theorem allows…
In the quantum path integral formulation of a field theory model an anomaly arises when the functional measure is not invariant under a symmetry transformation of the Lagrangian. In this paper, generalizing previous work done on the point…
We propose a path integral formulation for scale invariant quantum field theories. We do it by modifying the functional integration measure in such a way that the partition function is always exactly scale invariant, at the cost of having…
We propose an alternative interpretation for the meaning of noncommutativity of the string-inspired field theories and quantum mechanics. Arguments are presented to show that the noncommutativity generated in the stringy context should be…
In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, path integrals are normally derived from the Schroedinger equation. This assumes the two formalisms are equivalent. Since time plays a very different role in the Schroedinger equation and in path…
We discuss for some particular non supersymmetric theories a generalized symmetry that includes both the scale and axial transformations and leads to a single current that may contain also a pseudoscalar term. The method, inspired by the…
Particles in a curved space are classically described by a nonlinear sigma model action that can be quantized through path integrals. The latter require a precise regularization to deal with the derivative interactions arising from the…
We use the recently developed dimensional regularization (DR) scheme for quantum mechanical path integrals in curved space and with a finite time interval to compute the trace anomalies for a scalar field in six dimensions. This application…