Hamiltonian form of a Feynman path integral

Paul Krée

Amir Kalev, Itay Hen

We propose a natural, parameter-free, discrete-variable formulation of Feynman path integrals. We show that for discrete-variable quantum systems, Feynman path integrals take the form of walks on the graph whose weighted adjacency matrix is the Hamiltonian. By working out expressions for the partition function and transition amplitudes of discretized versions of continuous-variable quantum systems, and then taking the continuum limit, we explicitly recover Feynman's continuous-variable path integrals. We also discuss the implications of our result.

Sonia Mazzucchi

Björn Böttcher, Yana A. Butko, René L. Schilling +1 more

This note is devoted to Feynman formulas (i.e., representations of semigroups by limits of n -fold iterated integrals as n → ∞) and their connections with phase space Feynman path integrals. Some pseudodifferential operators corresponding to different types of quantization of a quadratic Hamiltonian function are considered. Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Feynman formulas for semigroups generated by these operators are obtained. Further, a construction of Hamiltonian (phase space) Feynman path integrals is introduced. Due to this construction, the Hamiltonian Feynman formulas obtained here and in our previous papers do coincide with Hamiltonian Feynman path integrals. This connects phase space Feynman path integrals with some integrals with respect to probability measures. These connections enable us to make a contribution to the theory of phase space Feynman path integrals, to prove the existence of some of these integrals, and to study their properties by means of stochastic analysis. The Feynman path integrals thus obtained are different for different types of quantization. This makes it possible to distinguish the process of quantization in the language of Feynman path integrals.

Vassili Nikitich Kolokoltsov