On the Trotter formula computation of the kernel for the harmonic oscillator

DOI10.1016/0034-4877(85)90060-6MaRDI QIDQ1820264zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors P. G. Hjorth

Publication date 1985

Published in Reports on Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1016/0034-4877(85)90060-6

zbMATH Keywords

expanding the path in Fourier seriesFeynman path integralharmonic oscillator HamiltoniankernelTrotter's formula

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Set functions and measures and integrals in infinite-dimensional spaces (Wiener measure, Gaussian measure, etc.) (28C20) Path integrals in quantum mechanics (81S40)

Review text

Feynman and Hibbs' original method of computing the path integral representing the kernel of exp(itH), where H is the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian, by expanding the path in Fourier series and integrating over the coefficients of the latter, is shown to give the wrong answer. The author presents a derivation starting from Trotter's formula on which the origin of the mistake can be traced to replacing \(\cos (\pi j/n)\) by \(1- (\pi j/n)^ 2\) in a product over \(j=1,...,n-1\) \((n\to \infty).\)

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Cites work

• Feynman Integrals and the Schrödinger Equation
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3167700 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3941846 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3282537 (Why is no real title available?)
• Mathematical theory of Feynman path integrals
• Space-time approach to non-relativistic quantum mechanics

Cited in

(2)

• Derivation of the harmonic oscillator propagator using the Feynman path integral and recursive relations
• Applying reproducing kernels to the evaluation and approximation of the simple and time-dependent imaginary time harmonic oscillator path integrals

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