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| Tags: feynman, formulation, function, integral, path, space |
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Although my question is on Feynman integration I briefly digress to discuss the Gauge Integral. Not so long ago, one of my professors drew my attention to a theory of integration known as Gauge integration (also called Henstock-Kurzweil integration of generalized Riemann integration). This theory was first develped in the 50's and has many advantages of Lebesgue's theory. It is not my purpose here to discuss this in detail so I refer you to: http://atlas.math.vanderbilt.edu/~schectex/ccc/gauge/ However, let me briefly describe some advantages. This integral arises from a slight change in the definition of the usual Riemann integral and leads to a theory with the following properties (for simplicity let's restrict to R): 1) The integral is defined for all Lebesgue integrable functions and gives the same results. 2) Unlike the Lebesgue integral, it is a CONDITIONAL integral and can therefore integrate a larger class of functions. 3) The full Fundamental Theorem of Calculus holds with no assumptions on the continuity of the derivative. Due to the simplicity of the definitions I have never understood why this theory is virtually unknown in so many universities. Since this integral is conditional for a while I was wondering if this theory has any applications to Feynman integration. I found a single account of application of this theory to path integrals (referenced on the site above): Muldowney, General theory of integration in function spaces, including Wiener and Feynman integration, 1987. To quote from the book (p. 75): "Various methods have since been devised for defining the function space integral. Ito (56) takes a limit of the finite-dimensional measures to produce a kind of measure in the function space. Muldowney, General theory of integration in function spaces, including Wiener and Feynman integration, 1987. Cameron and Storvick (54) put an imaginary component in the Wiener integral and then let a real component tend to zero. Cecile Morette DeWitt (55) and . . ., make use of the Gaussian form of the Feynman integrand. These definitions are generally such that the standard theorems and methods of integration cannot be easily applied. . . This approach [Henstocks theory] places no prior conditions on the functions or functionals of associated elements which we may wish to integrate. We do not require that the integrand be positive or real, or have Gaussian form, or contain a Lebesgue-type countable additive integrator . . .This means that the familiar methods of integration theory can be readily used when we tackle the problem of Feynman integration. All the other recent accounts of path integration I have encountered do not even refer to the existence of this theory. I would like to know if these ideas are familiar to the mathematics/physics community. Thank you. |
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