Star exponentials from propagators and path integrals

Abstract

In this paper we address the relation between the star exponentials emerging within the Deformation Quantization formalism and Feynman’s path integrals associated with propagators in quantum dynamics. In order to obtain such a relation, we start by visualizing the quantum propagator as an integral transform of the star exponential by means of the symbol corresponding to the time evolution operator and, thus, we introduce Feynman’s path integral representation of the propagator as a sum over all the classical histories. The star exponential thus constructed has the advantage that it does not depend on the convergence of formal series, as commonly understood within the context of Deformation Quantization. We include some basic examples to illustrate our findings, recovering standard results reported in the literature. Further, for an arbitrary finite dimensional system, we use the star exponential introduced here in order to find a particular representation of the star product which may be recognized as the one encountered in the context of the quantum field theory for a Poisson sigma model.