Stochastic interpretation of potential scattering in quantum mechanics (Q790534)

Nelson's stochastic process associated with the Schrödinger equation \(i\psi_ t=-\Delta \psi +V\psi\) satisfies the stochastic differential equation \(dX(t)=b^+(X(t),t)dt+2^{\frac{1}{2}}dW(t)\) where \(b^+=2(Re \nabla \psi /\psi +Im \nabla \psi /\psi),\) so \(| \psi(t)|^ 2\) is the density of X(t). \textit{D. S. Shucker} [J. Funct. Anal. 38, 146-155 (1980; Zbl 0447.60042)] has shown that in the absence of the potential V almost all sample paths of the process X(t)/t have limits when t tends to \(+\infty\), i.e., the quantum system behaves asymptotically like the classical one. We prove that an analogous result holds in the case of one-dimensional scattering when the continuous potential V is such that \(V(x)=O((1+| x|)^{-1-\alpha}),\quad | x| \to \infty\) and \(\int(1+| x|^{2+\alpha})| V(x)| dx<\infty\) for some \(\alpha>0\). The density of the limit \(\lim_{t\to +\infty}X(t)/t\) is expressed in terms of the scattering matrix. In the proof we use Levin-Marchenko representation of the solutions of the stationary scattering problem combined with the stationary phase method and we adopt the probabilistic tools from Shucker's paper.