Feynman operator calculus: The constructive theory (Q534168)

The purpose of this survey is to review recent progress on the implementation of Feynman's program, first formulated in 1951 in a paper and in 1965 in a book with Hibbs. Feynman suggested that path integrals in quantum physics can be reformulated by a time-ordered operator calculus. It was Freeman Dyson, however, who demonstrated the general use and power of time-ordering in Quantum Field Theory. Nevertheless, the mathematical meaning and uniqueness of time-ordering remained a major problem. Over the years, many researchers in mathematics and physics investigated the path integral approach in connection with Feynman's operator calculus. In the present paper, the authors develop an operator version of the Henstock-Kurzweil integral and extend the Hille-Yosida theory. As an application, they unify the theory of time-dependent parabolic and hyperbolic evolution equations using functional integrals. The claim is that the reformulation provides a new rigorous foundation for Feynman's path integral and allows to extend the Trotter-Kato theory.