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Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2020

Path integrals in a multiply-connected configuration space (50 years after)

Amaury Mouchet

Résumé

The proposal made 50 years ago by Schulman (1968), Laidlaw & Morette-DeWitt (1971) and Dowker (1972) to decompose the propagator according to the homotopy classes of paths was a major breakthrough: it showed how Feynman functional integrals opened a direct window on quantum properties of topological origin in the configuration space. This paper casts a critical look at the arguments brought by this series of papers and its numerous followers in an attempt to clarify the reason why the emergence of the unitary linear representation of the first homotopy group is not only sufficient but also necessary.

Dates et versions

hal-02961160 , version 1 (08-10-2020)

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Amaury Mouchet. Path integrals in a multiply-connected configuration space (50 years after). 2020. ⟨hal-02961160⟩
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