We consider a simple modification of standard phase-space path integrals and show that it leads in configuration space to Lagrangians depending also on accelerations.
In this paper a new approach is proposed to quantize mechanical systems whose equations of motion can not be put into Hamiltonian form. This approach is based on a new type of variational principle, which is adopted to a describe a relation: a damping particle may shares a common phase curve with a free particle, whose Lagrangian in the new variational principle can be considered as a Lagrangian density in phase space. According to Feynman's theory, the least action principle is adopted to modify the Feynman's path integral formula, where Lagrangian is replaced by Lagrangian density. In the case of conservative systems, the modification reduces to standard Feynman's propagator formula. As an example a particle with friction is analyzed in detail.
Feynman's Lagrangian path integral was an outgrowth of Dirac's vague surmise that Lagrangians have a role in quantum mechanics. Lagrangians implicitly incorporate Hamilton's first equation of motion, so their use contravenes the uncertainty principle, but they are relevant to semiclassical approximations and relatedly to the ubiquitous case that the Hamiltonian is quadratic in the canonical momenta, which accounts for the Lagrangian path integral's "success". Feynman also invented the Hamiltonian phase-space path integral, which is fully compatible with the uncertainty principle. We recast this as an ordinary functional integral by changing direct integration over subpaths constrained to all have the same two endpoints into an equivalent integration over those subpaths' unconstrained second derivatives. Function expansion with generalized Legendre polynomials of time then enables the functional integral to be unambiguously evaluated through first order in the elapsed time, yielding the Schroedinger equation with a unique quantization of the classical Hamiltonian. Widespread disbelief in that uniqueness stemmed from the mistaken notion that no subpath can have its two endpoints arbitrarily far separated when its nonzero elapsed time is made arbitrarily short. We also obtain the quantum amplitude for any specified configuration or momentum path, which turns out to be an ordinary functional integral over, respectively, all momentum or all configuration paths. The first of these results is directly compared with Feynman's mistaken Lagrangian-action hypothesis for such a configuration path amplitude, with special heed to the case that the Hamiltonian is quadratic in the canonical momenta.