Feynman-Kac formula: path integral formulation

Goal: Understand one of the most fundamental formulas related to the concept of path integral formulation (which is Feynman-Kac formula) and be familiar with its applications.

Study Team: Marcel Majocha, Adrian Mirecki, Aniszia Vajda, Alex Muresan

Supervision: Marcin Napiórkowski

Application: Quantum Physics, QFT

Perspective: Immerse into the constructive world of quantum field theory

Math related to the topic: probability theory, real analysis (in particular measure theory)

Logical scheme:

  1. Basics of measure and probability theory
  2. Introduction to stochastic processes (random walk, Brownian motion etc.)
  3. Diffusion models

Bonus: Historical note

References:

  1. Kac, M. On distributions of certain Wiener functionalsTransactions of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 65, no. 1, 1949, pp. 1–13
  2. Moral, Pierre Del. Feynman-Kac Formulae: Genealogical and Interacting Particle Systems with Applications, Springer, 2004.
  3. Pavliotis, Grigorios A. Stochastic Processes and Applications: Diffusion Processes, the Fokker-Planck and Langevin Equations, Springer, 2014.
  4. Kolmogorov, A. N., and S. V. Fomin, Measure, Lebesgue Integrals and Hilbert Space, Academic Press, 1962.
  5. Glimm and Jaffe, Quantum physics: a functional integral point of view

(list will expand during the project)

Summer project

Fundamentals of probability theory and stochastic processes

Responsible: Aniszia Vajda

Scheme:

a. Basics of measure theory and integration

b. Probability spaces and related concepts

c. Radom variables. Law of large numbers; independence and the central limit theorem

d. Discrete and continuous stochastic processes

e. Markov processes

f. Application to Brownian motion.

Main references:

Klenke, Probability theory: A comprehensive course

Grimmett and Stirzacker, Probability and random processes

More references here.