Path Integrals on Riemannian Manifolds with Symmetry and Induced Gauge Structure

Abstract

We formulate path integrals on any Riemannian manifold which admits the action of a compact Lie group by isometric transformations. We consider a path integral on a Riemannian manifold M on which a Lie group G acts isometrically. Then we show that the path integral on M is reduced to a family of path integrals on a quotient space Q=M/G and that the reduced path integrals are completely classified by irreducible unitary representations of G. It is not necessary to assume that the action of G on M is either free or transitive. Hence our formulation is applicable to a wide class of manifolds, which includes inhomogeneous spaces, and it covers all the inequivalent quantizations. To describe the path integral on inhomogeneous space, stratification geometry, which is a generalization of the concept of principal fiber bundle, is necessarily introduced. Using it we show that the path integral is expressed as a product of three factors; the rotational energy amplitude, the vibrational energy amplitude, and the holonomy factor. When a singular point arises in $Q$, we determine the boundary condition of the path integral kernel for a path which runs through the singularity.

20 pages, no figure

References in corpus (3)

• Reduction of Quantum Systems on Riemannian Manifolds with Symmetry and Application to Molecular Mechanics
• The Glue Around Quarks and the Interquark Potential
• Berry Connections and Induced Gauge Fields in Quantum Mechanics on Sphere