Instanton Solutions to Field Equations: From Quantum Mechanics to Field Theory
by
Ulrich Jentschura(Missouri S&T University, Rolla Department of Physics & University of Heidelberg)
→
Europe/Rome
Aula 2 (Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. E. Fermi)
Aula 2
Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. E. Fermi
Description
Instanton configurations are nontrivial saddle points in the path integral; they constitute solutions of the classical equations of motion. They are important both in the analysis of the spectrum of notoriously problematic potentials in quantum mechanics, as well as in the field integral formulation of partition functions, e.g., in the N-vector model. We shall discuss the so-called Fokker-Planck potential, where the ground state energy possesses a perturbation series vanishing to all orders, while the true ground-state energy is numerically different from zero and it is described by a non-analytic expansion. Possible generalizations to field theory are briefly sketched.
