This book provides the most comprehensive mathematical treatment to date of the Feynman path integral and Feynman's operational calculus. It is accessible to mathematicians, mathematical physicists and theoretical physicists.
Including new results and much material previously only available in the research literature, this book discusses both the mathematics and physics background that motivate the study of the Feynman path integral and Feynman's operational calculus, and also provides more detailed proofs of the central results.
The aim of this book is to make accessible to mathematicians, physicists and other scientists interested in quantum theory, the mathematically beautiful but difficult subjects of the Feynman integral and Feynman's operational calculus. Some advantages of the four approaches to the Feynman
integral which are given detailed treatment in this book are the following: the existence of the Feynman integral is established for very general potentials in all four cases; under more restrictive but still broad conditions, three of these Feynman integrals agree with one another and with the
unitary group from the usual approach to quantum dynamics; these same three Feynman integrals possess pleasant stability properties. Much of the material covered here was previously only in the research literature, and the book also contains some new results. The background material in mathematics
and physics that motivates the study of the Feynman integral and Feynman's operational calculus is discussed and detailed proofs are provided for the central results.
The second one [part of the final chapter] is a most welcome presentation of recent extensions and applications of Feynman's approach to a whole range of physical models of major interest ... it is here that the power of Feynman's approach of inspiring both mathematicans and physicists is best evidentiated.