On the pointwise convergence of the integral kernels in the Feynman-Trotter formula (Q2187292)

There are several ways to give a mathematically rigorous meaning to Feynman path integral. One possible approach is to define the Feynman path integral by the time slicing approximation. A detailed study of the convergence in the norm operator topology in the space of bounded operators on \(L^2\) was carried on by \textit{D. Fujiwara} [Rigorous time slicing approach to Feynman path integrals. Tokyo: Springer (2017; Zbl 1388.81002)]. The paper under review is devoted to the investigation of the convergence at the level of integral kernels for the time-slicing approximation of path integrals. The authors consider the Schrödinger equation \[i\partial_t \psi = (H_0+V(x))\psi, \] where \(H_0 = a_w\) is the Weyl quantization of a real quadratic form \(a(x,\xi)\) on \({\mathbb R}^{2d}\) and \(V \in L^\infty({\mathbb R}^d)\) is complex-valued potential. It is assumed that \( V \) belongs to one of the function spaces introduced by the authors, which are defined in terms of decay of the Fourier transform. For the above class of potentials, convergence of the integral kernels is proved uniformly on compact subsets of these functional spaces and for every fixed time, except for certain exceptional time values. Proofs rely on Banach algebras techniques for pseudo-differential operators.