Path integral for the relativistic particle in curved space

RAFAEL FERRARO

PHYSICAL REVIEW D - PARTICLE AND FILDS

The American Physical Society

Año: 1992 vol. 45 p. 1198 - 1209

0556-2821

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.)