Published February 15, 1992 | Version v1
Journal article

Path integral for the relativistic particle in curved space

  • 1. Departamento de Fisica, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Pab. I, 1428 Buenos Aires (Argentina)
  • 2. Instituto de Astronomia y Fisica del Espacio, Casilla de Correo 67, Sucursal 28, 1428 Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Description

The propagator for a single relativistic particle in a (D+1)-dimensional curved background is obtained by evaluating the canonical path integral in the true 2D-dimensional phase space. Since only paths moving forward in time are integrated, the resulting propagator depends on how the time is chosen; i.e., it depends on the reference system. In order for the propagator to satisfy the properties of a unitary theory, the time must be attached to a Killing vector. Although the measure is unique (it is the Liouville measure), the skeletonization of the phase-space functional action is ambiguous. One such ambiguity is exploited to obtain different propagators obeying the Klein-Gordon equation with different couplings to quantities related to the shape of the reference system (spatial curvature, etc.)

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review. D, Particles Fields
Journal Volume
45
Journal Issue
4
Series
Phys. Rev., D Part. Field.
Journal Page Range
1198-1209
ISSN
0556-2821
CODEN
PRVDA