Path Integrals and Feynman Diagrams for Classical Stochastic Processes
10 Apr 2022 11:27
Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder
This feels like a topic which should be obvious to me, but isn't, and so I want to wrap my head around it.
The parts I get
If we want to know the probability of a process with state space $\mathcal{X}$ moving from state $x$ at time $0$ to state $y$ at time $t$, I need $p(X(t) = y|X(0) = x)$. (Let's pretend everything has a density for now.) By the law of total probability I can insert as many intermediate times $0 < t_1 < t_2 < \ldots t_n < 1$ as I like, and \[ p(X(t)=y|X(0)=x) = \int_{\mathcal{X}^n}{p(X(t_1) = u_1, X(t_2) = u_2, \ldots X(t_n) = u_n, X(t) = y|X(0) = x) du_1 \ldots du_n} \] which by the definition of conditional probability will be \[ p(X(t)=y|X(0)=x) = \int_{\mathcal{X}^n}{\left(\prod_{i=1}^n{p(X(t_i) = u_i|X(0)=x, X(t_1) = u_1, \ldots X(t_{i-1}) = u_{i-1})}\right) du_{1:n}} \] with the understandings that \( t_{n+1} = t \), \( u_{n+1}=y \). If this is a Markov process, then earlier states become irrelevant when conditioning on later states, \[ p(X(t)=y|X(0)=x) = \int_{\mathcal{X}^n}{\left(\prod_{i=1}^n{p(X(t_i) = u_i| X(t_{i-1}) = u_{i-1})}\right) du_{1:n}} \] or \[ p(X(t)=y|X(0)=x) = \int_{\mathcal{X}^n}{\exp{\left(\sum_{i=1}^n{h(t_i, u_i| t_{i-1}, u_{i-1}))}\right)} du_{1:n}} \] introducing the function $h(t_i, u_i| t_{i-1}, u_{i-1}) \equiv \log{p(X(t_i) = u_i| X(t_{i-1}) = u_{i-1})}$. Assuming homogeneous transitions would then amount to assuming only the length of the interval \( t_i - t_{i-1} \) matters, so we could (overloading the notation a bit) write this as \( h(t_i, u_i| t_{i-1}, u_{i-1}) = h(u_i|u_{i-1}; t_{i} - t_{i-1}) \). A continuous, time-homogeneous Markov process will have a generator $\mathbf{G}$, meaning that the transition operator over an interval $\Delta t$ will be of the form $e^{\Delta t \mathbf{G}}$. Taking $\Delta t$ small, the transition operator will be $\approx 1 + \Delta t \mathbf{G}$, and its log $\approx \Delta t \mathbf{G}$, which would let us write $h(u_i| u_{i-1}; \Delta t)$ in terms of the generator $\mathbf{G}$ (at the cost of more algebra than I want to write down just now). Passing non-rigorously to the limit, the sum inside the exponential will become an integral over time, and we should be able to write this over-all transition probability $p(X(t)=y|X(0)=x)$ as a sum over all paths or histories, \[ p(X(t)=y|X(0)=x) = \int_{u: t \mapsto \mathcal{X}, u(0) = x, u(t)=y}{\exp{\left( \int_{s=0}^{t}{L(s, u(s), \dot{u}(s), \ldots) ds}\right)} du} \] where again $L$ could be recovered from the generator if I was willing to do algebra. The presence of derivatives of the path in $L$ comes from the fact that generators are (usually) differential operators.
(At this point a mathematical quibbler might well ask what \( du \) is, exactly, since we're now integrating over an infinite-dimensional space of continuous-time functions, and Lebesgue measure, for instance, doesn't properly extend to this setting. This is an important point I intend to ignore for the present.)
So what don't I understand?
Three big things stick out as especially irritating:- Where the cumulant generating function fits in to all this. (One problem here might be that while I can and do use cumulants, I have no intuition about them at all.)
- How to (in general) read off diagrammatic expansions from this.
- What to do for non-Markov processes. (Wio, below, suggests coming up with Markovian approximations.)
More broadly, I want to understand how much of this structure I learned as a physicist really has anything to do with physics, and how much is just a generality about stochastic processes.
See also: Field Theory>; Interacting Particle Systems; Large Deviations; Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics; Stochastic Differential Equations; Stochastic Processes
- Recommended (very miscellaneous):
- Kirill Ilinski, Physics of Finance: Gauge Modelling in Non-equilibrium Pricing
- Richard D. Mattuck, A Guide to Feynman Diagrams in the Many-Body Problem
- Eric Mjolsness, "Stochastic Process Semantics for Dynamical Grammar Syntax: An Overview", cs.AI/0511073
- Eric Smith, "Large-deviation principles, stochastic effective actions, path entropies, and the structure and meaning of thermodynamic descriptions", arxiv:1102.3938
- Horacio Wio, Path Integrals for Stochastic Processes
- To read:
- F. S. Abril and C. J. Quimbay, "Temporal fluctuation scaling in nonstationary time series using the path integral formalism", Physical Review E 103 (2021): 042126
- Paul C. Bressloff, "Construction of stochastic hybrid path integrals using 'quantum-mechanical' operators", arxiv:2012.07770
- Yana A. Butko, René L. Schilling, Oleg G. Smolyanov, "Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Feynman formulae for some Feller semigroups and their perturbations", arxiv:1203.1199
- Joshua C. Chang, Van Savage, Tom Chou, "A path-integral approach to Bayesian inference for inverse problems using the semiclassical approximation", arxiv:1312.2974
- Vladimir Y. Chernyak, Mcihael Chertkov and Christopher Jarzynski, "Path-integral analysis of fluctuation theorems for general Langevin processes", cond-mat/0605471
- E. G. D. Cohen, "Properties of nonequilibrium steady states: a path integral approach", Journal of Statistical Mechanics (2008): P07014
- Leticia F. Cugliandolo, Vivien Lecomte, Frederic Van Wijland, "Building a path-integral calculus: a covariant discretization approach", Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical 52 (2019): 50LT01, arxiv:1806.09486
- Ronald Dickman and Ronaldo Vidigal, "Path Integrals and Perturbation Theory for Stochastic Processes", cond-mat/0205321
- Masao Doi
- "Second quantization representation for classical many-particle system", Journal of Physics A 9 (1976): 1465-1477
- "Stochastic theory of diffusion-controlled reaction", Journal of Physics A 9 (1976): 1479--1495
- Josef Honerkamp, Stochastic Dynamical Systems
- Claude Itzykson and Jean-Michel Drouffe, Statistical Field Theory
- H. J. Kappen, "Path integrals and symmetry breaking for optimal control theory", Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (2005): P11011
- Richard Kleeman, "A path integral formalism for non-equilibrium Hamiltonian statistical systems", Journal of Statistical Physics 158 (2015): 1271--1297, arxiv:1307.1102
- Daniel C. Mattis and M. Lawrence Glasser, "The uses of quantum field theory in diffusion-limited reactions", Reviews of Modern Physics 70 (1998): 979--1002
- L. Peliti, "Path integral approach to birth-death processes on a lattice", Journal de Physique 46 (1985): 1469--1483 [Ungated copy]
- Michael Polyak, "Feynman diagrams for pedestrians and mathematicians", math.GT/0406251
- Uwe C. Tauber, "Field Theory Approaches to Nonequilibrium Dynamics", cond-mat/0511743
- John J. Vastola, William R. Holmes, "Stochastic path integrals can be derived like quantum mechanical path integrals", arxiv:1909.1299
- Andreas Wipf, Statistical Approach to Quantum Field Theory