Schrödinger-Feynman quantization and composition of observables in general boundary quantum field theory (Q2346206)

This paper is concerned with the generalisation of what is meant by a quantum theory and what features are required for the fundamental concepts in quantum field theory. In particular the Schrödinger-Feynman quantisation of an affine field theory is examined. The paper gives a detailed description of the geometric and quantum theories. The crucial part of the paper is the extension of the Schrödinger-Feynman quantisation scheme to include observables. These are constructed as a map and not of the more connectional operator on a Hilbert space. The definition allows for several properties in quantum field theory that conventional theory does not allow. These concern the composition of observables and the time product of consecutive observables. The formalism for this is straightforward in the Feynman path integral method. The definition of a quantum observable is expressed in the Feynman notation and is an operator \(\phi \) from the Hilbert space at time \(t_{a} \) to the space at \( t_{b} \),with initial and final states \( \psi \) and \( \chi \) : \[ \int_{t_{a}}^{t_{b}} \psi(\phi (t_{a}))\chi(\phi(t_{b})\phi(t_{1},x_{1}) \dots \phi(t_{n},x_{n})\exp(iS(\phi) )d\mu(\phi) \]