Narrow Results

This paper explores the idea that within the framework of three-dimensional quantum gravity one can extend the notion of Feynman diagram to include the coupling of the particles in the diagram with quantum gravity. The paper concentrates on the non-trivial part of the gravitational response, which is to the large momenta propagating around a closed loop. By taking a limiting case one can give a simple geometric description of this gravitational response. This is calculated in detail for the example of a closed Feynman loop in the form of a trefoil knot. The results show that when the magnitude of the momentum passes a certain threshold value, non-trivial gravitational configurations of the knot play an important role.

We consider the Feynman-type approximations to functional integrals over the distribution of the Brownian sheet on a compact connected Lie group M, which give a representation of the integrals over the functional space C([0, 1] × [0, 1], M) as the limit of integrals over the finite-dimensional manifolds M × ⋯ × M. The known approximation formulas for the one-parameter Brownian motion are generalized to the case of the Brownian sheet.

Given a compact Lie group and a conjugate-invariant Levi process on it, generated by the operator $(L,D(L))$, we construct the Levi process on the path space of $G$, associated with the convolution semigroup $\{{\mu }_t,t\ge 0\}$ of probability measures, where ${\mu }_t$ is the distribution of the Levi process on $G$ generated by $(tL,D(L))$. The constructed process is obtained as the weak limit of piecewise constant paths, which, as well as proving its existence and properties, provides finite-dimensional approximations of Chernoff type to the integrals with respect to its distribution.

I offer some historical comments about the origins of Feynman's path-integral approach, as an alternative approach to standard quantum mechanics. Looking at the interaction between Einstein and Feynman, which was mediated by Feynman's thesis supervisor John Wheeler, it is argued that, contrary to what one might expect, the significance of the interaction between Einstein and Feynman pertained to a critique of classical field theory, rather than to a direct critique of quantum mechanics itself. Nevertheless, the critical perspective on classical field theory became a motivation and point of departure for Feynman's space-time approach to non-relativistic quantum mechanics.