Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

We review some of the techniques used to study the dynamics of disordered systems subject to both quenched and fast (thermal) noise. Starting from the Martin-Siggia-Rose path integral formalism for a single variable stochastic dynamics, we provide a pedagogical survey of the perturbative, i.e. diagrammatic, approach to dynamics and how this formalism can be used for studying soft spin models. We review the supersymmetric formulation of the Langevin dynamics of these models and discuss the physical implications of the supersymmetry. We also describe the key steps involved in studying the disorder-averaged dynamics. Finally, we discuss the path integral approach for the case of hard Ising spins and review some recent developments in the dynamics of such kinetic Ising models.

A novel time domain solver of Maxwell's equations in passive (dispersive and absorbing) media is proposed. The method is based on the path integral formalism of quantum theory and entails the use of ({\it i}) the Hamiltonian formalism and ({\it ii}) pseudospectral methods (the fast Fourier transform, in particular) of solving differential equations. In contrast to finite differencing schemes, the path integral based algorithm has no artificial numerical dispersion (dispersive errors), operates at the Nyquist limit (two grid points per shortest wavelength in the wavepacket) and exhibits an exponential convergence as the grid size increases, which, in turn, should lead to a higher accuracy. The Gauss law holds exactly with no extra computational cost. Each time step requires $O(N\log_2 N)$ elementary operations where $N$ is the grid size. It can also be applied to simulations of electromagnetic waves in passive media whose properties are time dependent when conventional stationary (scattering matrix) methods are inapplicable. The stability and accuracy of the algorithm are investigated in detail.

In this master thesis, a new approximation scheme to non-relativistic potential scattering is developed and discussed. The starting points are two exact path integral representations of the T-matrix, which permit the application of the Feynman-Jensen variational method. A simple Ansatz for the trial action is made, and, in both cases, the variational procedure singles out a particular one-particle classical equation of motion, given in integral form. While the first is real, in the second representation this trajectory is complex and evolves according to an effective, time dependent potential. Using a cumulant expansion, the first correction to the variational approximation is also evaluated. The high energy behavior of the approximation is investigated, and is shown to contain exactly the leading and next-to-leading order of the eikonal expansion, and parts of higher terms. Our results are then numerically tested in two particular situations where others approximations turned out to be unsatisfactory. Substantial improvements are found.

We describe a new framework for soft gluon resummation, based on path integral methods. The approach recovers previous results obtained in the eikonal approximation, in which all emitted gluons become soft. Furthermore, a clear physical interpretation allows straightforward extension of the framework to beyond the eikonal approximation, and we use this to classify the structure of next-to-eikonal corrections to matrix elements.

I propose a path integral description of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Hamiltonian, both in one and two dimensions, after mapping the real space model onto the time scale. While the lattice degrees of freedom are classical functions of time and are integrated out exactly, the electron particle paths are treated quantum mechanically. The method accounts for the variable range of the electronic hopping processes. The free energy of the system and its temperature derivatives are computed by summing at any $T$ over the ensemble of relevant particle paths which mainly contribute to the total partition function. In the low $T$ regime, the {\it heat capacity over T} ratio shows un upturn peculiar to a glass-like behavior. This feature is more sizeable in the square lattice than in the linear chain as the overall hopping potential contribution to the total action is larger in higher dimensionality. The effects of the electron-phonon anharmonic interactions on the phonon subsystem are studied by the path integral cumulant expansion method.

We present a coordinate-invariant approach, based on a Pauli-Villars measure, to the definition of the path integral in two-dimensional conformal field theory. We discuss some advantages of this approach compared to the operator formalism and alternative path integral approaches. We show that our path integral measure is invariant under conformal transformations and field reparametrizations, in contrast to the measure used in the Fujikawa calculation, and we show the agreement, despite different origins, of the conformal anomaly in the two approaches. The natural energy-momentum in the Pauli-Villars approach is a true coordinate-invariant tensor quantity, and we discuss its nontrivial relationship to the corresponding non-tensor object arising in the operator formalism, thus providing a novel explanation within a path integral context for the anomalous Ward identities of the latter. We provide a direct calculation of the nontrivial contact terms arising in expectation values of certain energy-momentum products, and we use these to perform a simple consistency check confirming the validity of the change of variables formula for the path integral. Finally, we review the relationship between the conformal anomaly and the energy-momentum two-point functions in our formalism.

We present a coordinate-invariant approach, based on a Pauli-Villars measure, to the definition of the path integral in two-dimensional conformal field theory. We discuss some advantages of this approach compared to the operator formalism and alternative path integral approaches. We show that our path integral measure is invariant under conformal transformations and field reparametrizations, in contrast to the measure used in the Fujikawa calculation, and we show the agreement, despite different origins, of the conformal anomaly in the two approaches. The natural energy-momentum in the Pauli-Villars approach is a true coordinate-invariant tensor quantity, and we discuss its nontrivial relationship to the corresponding non-tensor object arising in the operator formalism, thus providing a novel explanation within a path integral context for the anomalous Ward identities of the latter. We provide a direct calculation of the nontrivial contact terms arising in expectation values of certain energy-momentum products, and we use these to perform a simple consistency check confirming the validity of the change of variables formula for the path integral. Finally, we review the relationship between the conformal anomaly and the energy-momentum two-point functions in our formalism.

This paper proves a locality principle for a wave-mechanical particle governed by the Schroedinger equation. It is shown that rho(r,Beta), the Laplace transform of the local density of states n(r,E), depends significantly only on the potential V(r') at points r' near r. The effect of changes of V(r') at distant points r' (abs. val. (r' - r) d) on rho(r,Beta), decay in a Gaussian fashion with a. This result sheds some light on the locality of physical properties of extended systems and provides general support for various local methods of calculation. (Author)

Previous heat capacity estimators used in path integral simulations either have large variances that grow to infinity with the number of path variables or require the evaluation of first and second order derivatives of the potential. In the present paper, we show that the evaluation of the total energy by the T-method estimator and of the heat capacity by the TT-method estimator can be implemented by a finite difference scheme in a stable fashion. As such, the variances of the resulting estimators are finite and the evaluation of the estimators requires the potential function only. By comparison with the task of computing the partition function, the evaluation of the estimators requires k + 1 times more calls to the potential, where k is the order of the difference scheme employed. Quantum Monte Carlo simulations for the Ne_13 cluster demonstrate that a second order central-difference scheme should suffice for most applications.

Two methods are compared that are used in path integral simulations. Both methods aim to achieve faster convergence to the quantum limit than the so-called primitive algorithm (PA). One method, originally proposed by Takahashi and Imada, is based on a higher-order approximation (HOA) of the quantum mechanical density operator. The other method is based upon an effective propagator (EPr). This propagator is constructed such that it produces correctly one and two-particle imaginary time correlation functions in the limit of small densities even for finite Trotter numbers P. We discuss the conceptual differences between both methods and compare the convergence rate of both approaches. While the HOA method converges faster than the EPr approach, EPr gives surprisingly good estimates of thermal quantities already for P = 1. Despite a significant improvement with respect to PA, neither HOA nor EPr overcomes the need to increase P linearly with inverse temperature. We also derive the proper estimator for radial distribution functions for HOA based path integral simulations.

We perform a thorough analysis on the choice of estimators for random series path integral methods. In particular, we show that both the thermodynamic (T-method) and the direct (H-method) energy estimators have finite variances and are straightforward to implement. It is demonstrated that the agreement between the T-method and the H-method estimators provides an important consistency check on the quality of the path integral simulations. We illustrate the behavior of the various estimators by computing the total, kinetic, and potential energies of a molecular hydrogen cluster using three different path integral techniques. Statistical tests are employed to validate the sampling strategy adopted as well as to measure the performance of the parallel random number generator utilized in the Monte Carlo simulation. Some issues raised by previous simulations of the hydrogen cluster are clarified.

In this article, I provide significant mathematical evidence in support of the existence of short-time approximations of any polynomial order for the computation of density matrices of physical systems described by arbitrarily smooth and bounded from below potentials. While for Theorem 2, which is ``experimental'', I only provide a ``physicist's'' proof, I believe the present development is mathematically sound. As a verification, I explicitly construct two short-time approximations to the density matrix having convergence orders 3 and 4, respectively. Furthermore, in the Appendix, I derive the convergence constant for the trapezoidal Trotter path integral technique. The convergence orders and constants are then verified by numerical simulations. While the two short-time approximations constructed are of sure interest to physicists and chemists involved in Monte Carlo path integral simulations, the present article is also aimed at the mathematical community, who might find the results interesting and worth exploring. I conclude the paper by discussing the implications of the present findings with respect to the solvability of the dynamical sign problem appearing in real-time Feynman path integral simulations.

Path integral derivations are presented for two recently developed complex trajectory techniques for the propagation of wave packets, Complex WKB and BOMCA. Complex WKB is derived using a standard saddle point approximation of the path integral, but taking into account the hbar dependence of both the amplitude and the phase of the intial wave function, thus giving rise to the need for complex classical trajectories. BOMCA is derived using a modification of the saddle point technique, in which the path integral is approximated by expanding around a near-classical path, chosen so that up to some predetermined order there is no need to add any correction terms to the leading order approximation. Both Complex WKB and BOMCA give the same leading order approximation; in Complex WKB higher accuracy is achieved by adding correction terms, while in BOMCA no additional terms are ever added -higher accuracy is achieved by changing the path along which the original approximation is computed. The path integral derivation of the methods explains the need to incorporate contributions from more than one trajectory, as observed in previous numerical work. On the other hand, it emerges that the methods provide efficient schemes for computing the higher order terms in the asymptotic evaluation of path integrals. The understanding we develop of BOMCA suggests that there should exist near-classical trajectories that give exact quantum dynamical results when used in the computation of the path integral keeping just the leading order term. We also apply our path integral techniques to give a compact derivation of the semiclassical approximation to the coherent state propagator.

The problem of the measurability of the electromagnetic field is investigated 1) in the framework of the abstract restricted-path-integral method, and 2) by explicitly accounting the action of the field onto the meter and its back reaction. The meaning of the previously obtained results as well as of the classical results of Bohr and Rosenfeld are made clear. The restricted-path-integral method with integration over field configurations is shown to give an estimation on the measurability of the field by any device not disturbing the measured field (in the process of measurement) more than by the measurement error. Such method of measurement is necessary for the control of the field in electronic devices.

We introduce a new approach to highly correlated systems which generalizes the Fermi Hypernetted Chain and Correlated Basis Function techniques. While the latter approaches can only be applied to systems for which a nonrelativistic wave function can be defined, the new approach is based on the variation of a trial hamiltonian within a path integral framework and thus can also be applied to relativistic and field theoretical problems. We derive a diagrammatic scheme for the new approach and show how a particular choice of the trial hamiltonian corresponds exactly to the use of a Jastrow correlated ansatz for the wave function in the Fermi Hypernetted Chain approach. We show how our new approach can be used to find upper bounds to ground state energies in systems which the FHNC cannot handle, including those described by an energy-dependent effective hamiltonian. We demonstrate our approach by applying it to a quantum field theoretical system of interacting pions and nucleons.

The reweighted random series techniques provide finite-dimensional approximations to the quantum density matrix of a physical system that have fast asymptotic convergence. We study two special reweighted techniques that are based upon the Levy-Ciesielski and Wiener-Fourier series, respectively. In agreement with the theoretical predictions, we demonstrate by numerical examples that the asymptotic convergence of the two reweighted methods is cubic for smooth enough potentials. For each reweighted technique, we propose some minimalist quadrature techniques for the computation of the path averages. These quadrature techniques are designed to preserve the asymptotic convergence of the original methods.

We perform a thorough analysis of the relationship between discrete and series representation path integral methods, which are the main numerical techniques used in connection with the Feynman-Kac formula. First, a new interpretation of the so-called standard discrete path integral methods is derived by direct discretization of the Feynman-Kac formula. Second, we consider a particular random series technique based upon the Levy-Ciesielski representation of the Brownian bridge and analyze its main implementations, namely the primitive, the partial averaging, and the reweighted versions. It is shown that the n=2^k-1 subsequence of each of these methods can also be interpreted as a discrete path integral method with appropriate short-time approximations. We therefore establish a direct connection between the discrete and the random series approaches. In the end, we give sharp estimates on the rates of convergence of the partial averaging and the reweighted Levy-Ciesielski random series approach for sufficiently smooth potentials. The asymptotic rates of convergence are found to be O(1/n^2), in agreement with the rates of convergence of the best standard discrete path integral techniques.

This article discusses the basic properties of the path integral method for continuum fermions, focusing on the restricted path integral (RPIMC) approach. Lecture Notes Collection FreeScience.info ID69 Obtained from http://people.physics.uiuc.edu/Ceperley/papers/103.pdf http://www.freescience.info/go.php?pagename=books&id=69

We discuss two numerical methods, based on a path integral approach described in a previous paper (I), for solving the stochastic equations underlying the financial markets: the Monte Carlo approach, and the Green function deterministic numerical method. Then, we apply the latter to some specific financial problems. In particular, we consider the pricing of a European option, a zero-coupon bond, a caplet, an American option, and a Bermudan swaption.

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 mechanics. No prior exposure to path integrals is assumed, however. The path integral is a formulation of quantum mechanics equivalent to the standard formulations, offering a new way of looking at the subject which is, arguably, more intuitive than the usual approaches. Applications of path integrals are as vast as those of quantum mechanics itself, including the quantum mechanics of a single particle, statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics and quantum field theory. After an introduction including a very brief historical overview of the subject, we derive a path integral expression for the propagator in quantum mechanics, including the free particle and harmonic oscillator as examples. We then discuss a variety of applications, including path integrals in multiply-connected spaces, Euclidean path integrals and statistical mechanics, perturbation theory in quantum mechanics and in quantum field theory, and instantons via path integrals. For the most part, the emphasis is on explicit calculations in the familiar setting of quantum mechanics, with some discussion (often brief and schematic) of how these ideas can be applied to more complicated situations such as field theory.

We propose an alternative method for Feynman path integrals on compact Riemannian manifolds. Our method employs action integrals along the shortest paths. In the case of rank 1 locally symmetric Riemannian manifolds, we prove the strong convergence of time slicing products of oscillatory integrals for low energy functions. Moreover, the strong limit includes Dewitt curvature $R/6$, where $R$ denotes the scalar curvature of a Riemannian manifold.

The long-range objective is to develop and apply microscopic phase space methods and global path integral constructions to gain a deeper theoretical and computational understanding of electromagnetic, seismic, and acoustic direct and inverse wave propagation problems. Specifically, this project focuses on the development of new multidimensional algorithms for direct (forward) acoustic propagation and generalized acoustic tomography at the level of the reduced scalar Helmholtz equation. The introduction and widespread application of the parabolic (paraxial) approximation marked a significant advance in wave propagation modeling for ocean seismo-acoustic and other strong channeling environments. In many respects, this is a most natural motivation for the application of phase space factorization and path integral methods to the Helmholtz equation. (JHD)

The conventional second-order Path Integral Monte Carlo method is plagued with the sign problem in solving many-fermion systems. This is due to the large number of anti-symmetric free fermion propagators that are needed to extract the ground state wave function at large imaginary time. In this work, we show that optimized fourth-order Path Integral Monte Carlo methods, which use no more than 5 free-fermion propagators, can yield accurate quantum dot energies for up to 20 polarized electrons with the use of the Hamiltonian energy estimator.

We give a pedagogical review of the application of field theoretic and path integral methods to calculate moments of the probability density function of stochastic differential equations perturbatively.

This paper provides a pedagogical introduction to the quantum mechanical path integral and its use in proving index theorems in geometry, specifically the Gauss-Bonnet-Chern theorem and Lefschetz fixed point theorem. It also touches on some other important concepts in mathematical physics, such as that of stationary phase, supersymmetry and localization. It is aimed at advanced undergraduates and beginning graduates, with no previous knowledge beyond undergraduate quantum mechanics assumed. The necessary mathematical background in differential geometry is reviewed, though a familiarity with this material is undoubtedly helpful.