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Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A Mathematical and Physical Sciences

On Feynmann’s ‘integral over all paths’

B. Davison

Published Aug 31, 1954• 35 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract A definition of Feynmann’s ‘integral over all paths’ is given in precise mathematical terms, namely, it is shown, subject to some restrictions on the nature of the Lagrangian, that the ratio of the ‘integral’ to a certain normalization factor is uniquely determined by postulating: (i) the composition law, (ii) the possibility of taking any factor independent of the paths outside the integration over paths, and (iii) that the quantity in question should not involve any arbitrary ‘universal’ constants of the dimensions of inverse time. The nature of the normalization factor, referred to above, is also examined. Finally, a method of parametrization of paths is introduced, and it is shown that Feynmann’s ‘integral over all paths’ can, alternatively, be defined in terms of this parametrization.

DOI
10.1098/rspa.1954.0201

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The definition of Feynman path integrals (Feynman functional integrals) as integrals with respect to a generalized measure, called the Lebesgue–Feynman measure in the paper and being an infinite-dimensional analogue of the classical Lebesgue measure on finite-dimensional Euclidean space, is discussed. This definition, which is a formalization of Feynman’s original definition, is different from those used previously in the mathematical literature. It makes it possible to give a description of the origin of quantum anomaly which is a mathematically correct version of the description given in the book Path Integrals and Quantum Anomalies by K. Fujikawa and H. Suzuki (Oxford, 2004) (and erroneously qualified as wrong in the book Functional Integration: Action and Symmetries by P. Cartier and C. DeWitt-Morette (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2006)).

Doklady Mathematics•Jul 1, 2017•8 citations
Abstract A definition of Feynmann’s ‘integral over all paths’ is given in precise mathematical terms, namely, it is shown, subject to some restrictions on the nature of the Lagrangian, that the ratio of the ‘integral’ to a certain normalization factor is uniquely determined by postulating: (i) the composition law, (ii) the possibility of taking any factor independent of the paths outside the integration over paths, and (iii) that the quantity in question should not involve any arbitrary ‘universal’ constants of the dimensions of inverse time. The nature of the normalization factor, referred to above, is also examined. Finally, a method of parametrization of paths is introduced, and it is shown that Feynmann’s ‘integral over all paths’ can, alternatively, be defined in terms of this parametrization.
(and its generalisations that include magnetic fields) can be roughly divided into two classes. In the aproaches of the first class that we shall not discuss here in detail the Feynman integral is not supposed to be a genuine integral, but is specified as some generalised functional on an appropriate space of functions, which can be defined, for example, as the limit of certain discrete approximations (see e.g. [16], [44] and more recent papers [24], [25], [34]), by means of analytical continuation (see e.g. [26], [23] and references therein), by extensions of Parceval’s identity and by related axiomatic definitions (see [2], [5], [30], [11], [42] and references therein) or by means of the white noise analysis (see [22]), see also [46] for the discussion of path integral applied to the Dirac equation. These approaches still cover only a very restrictive class of potentials, for example, singular potentials were considered only by white noise analysis approach but only in one-dimensional case (see e.g. [6] and references therein). In the approaches of the second class, one tries to define the infinite-dimensional Feynmann integral as a genuine integral over a bona fide σ-additive measure on an appropriate space of trajectories. The first attempt made in [19] to construct such a measure was erronious and led to understanding that there is no direct generalisation of Wiener measure that can give an analog of FeynmanKac formula for the case of Schrodinger operators. A correct construction of the Feynman integral in terms of the Wiener measure was proposed in [15] and was based on the idea of the rotation of the classical trajectories in complex
A path , in general, is defined by a determinate trajectory in time, from an initial to a final point. The classical trajectory is only one of the possible trajectories, and in quantum mechanics all the possible paths between the initial and final point come into play. Recall that the probability amplitude is a complex number that is assigned to each determinate path. Indeterminate paths are defined as a collection of determinate paths that are experimentally indistinguishable . In the Dirac–Feynman approach, the inherent indeterminacy of the quantum entity is realized by the degree of freedom – in undergoing time evolution – “taking” indeterminate paths [Baaquie (2013e)]. For a quantum degree of freedom evolving from an observed initial state to the observed final state – and with no other observations made – the Feynman path integral is a mathematical construction that computes the probability amplitudes by summing over all the allowed determinate paths of the degree of freedom – discussed in Feynman and Hibbs (1965), Zinn-Justin (1993), Zinn-Justin (2005) and Baaquie (2013e). Probability amplitude and time evolution Recall that the description of a quantum system, at a particular instant,isgiven by its state vector, namely |ψ>. To avoid confusion with the concept of a state vector, the term probability amplitude is used for describing a quantum entity undergoing transitions in time.
Introduction/purpose: Starting from the Hamiltonian an alternative description of quantum mechanics has been given, based on the sum of all possible paths between an initial and a final point. Methods: Theoretical methods of mathematical physics. Integral method based on the path integral. Results: The method and concepts of the path integral could be applied to other branches of physics, not limited to quantum mechanics. Conclusions: The Path Integral approach gives a global description of fields, unlike the usual Lagrangian approach which is a local description of fields.
This paper is concerned with the question of the existence of composition laws in the sum-over-histories approach to relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum cosmology, and its connection with the existence of a canonical formulation. In nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, the propagator is represented by a sum over histories in which the paths move forward in time. The composition law of the propagator then follows from the fact that the paths intersect an intermediate surface of constant time once and only once, and a partition of the paths according to their crossing position may be affected. In relativistic quantum mechanics, by contrast, the propagators (or Green functions) may be represented by sums over histories in which the paths move backward and forward in time. They therefore intersect surfaces of constant time more than once, and the relativistic composition law, involving a normal derivative term, is not readily recovered. The principal technical aim of this paper is to show that the relativistic composition law may, in fact, be derived directly from a sum over histories by partitioning the paths according to their first crossing position of an intermediate surface. We review the various Green functions of the Klein-Gordon equation, and derive their composition laws. We obtain path-integral representations for all Green functions except the causal one. We use the proper time representation, in which the path integral has the form of a nonrelativistic sum over histories but is integrated over time.The question of deriving the composition laws therefore reduces to the question of factoring the propagators of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics across an arbitrary surface in configuration space. This may be achieved using a known result called the path decomposition expansion (PDX). We give a proof of the PDX using a spacetime lattice definition of the Euclidean propagator. We use the PDX to derive the composition laws of relativistic quantum mechanics from the sum over histories. We also derive canonical representations of all of the Green functions of relativistic quantum mechanics, i.e., express them in the form 〈x''\ensuremath{\Vert}x'〉, where the {\ensuremath{\Vert}x〉} are a complete set of configuration-space eigenstates. These representations make it clear why the Hadamard Green function G(1){\mathit{G}}^{(1)}G(1) does not obey a standard composition law. They also give a hint as to why the causal Green function does not appear to possess a sum-over-histories representation. We discuss the broader implications of our methods and results for quantum cosmology, and parametrized theories generally. We show that there is a close parallel between the existence of a composition law and the existence of a canonical formulation, in that both are dependent on the presence of a timelike Killing vector. We also show why certain naive composition laws that have been proposed in the past for quantum cosmology are incorrect. Our results suggest that the propagation amplitude between three-metrics in quantum cosmology, as constructed from the sum over histories, does not obey a composition law.
The definition of Feynman path integrals (Feynman functional integrals) as integrals with respect to a generalized measure, called the Lebesgue–Feynman measure in the paper and being an infinite-dimensional analogue of the classical Lebesgue measure on finite-dimensional Euclidean space, is discussed. This definition, which is a formalization of Feynman’s original definition, is different from those used previously in the mathematical literature. It makes it possible to give a description of the origin of quantum anomaly which is a mathematically correct version of the description given in the book Path Integrals and Quantum Anomalies by K. Fujikawa and H. Suzuki (Oxford, 2004) (and erroneously qualified as wrong in the book Functional Integration: Action and Symmetries by P. Cartier and C. DeWitt-Morette (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2006)).