Nonlinear Drift in Feynman-Kac Theory: Preserving Early Probabilistic Insights

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Yaacoub, Daniel, Blanco, Stéphane, Cornet, Jean-François, Dauchet, Jérémi, Fournier, Richard, Vourc'h, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866912407322886144
author Yaacoub, Daniel
Blanco, Stéphane
Cornet, Jean-François
Dauchet, Jérémi
Fournier, Richard
Vourc'h, Thomas
author_facet Yaacoub, Daniel
Blanco, Stéphane
Cornet, Jean-François
Dauchet, Jérémi
Fournier, Richard
Vourc'h, Thomas
contents In 1905, Einstein's theory of Brownian motion supported the molecular basis of the diffusion equation and introduced two complementary viewpoints: a deterministic field description and a probabilistic formulation based on stochastic particle ensembles. The consequences were far-reaching in the development of key concepts of modern physics such as wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics. In the 1940s, Feynman and Kac advanced this framework by casting path integrals within measure theory, defining solutions as mathematical expectations and extending the method to a broad class of differential operators. Despite its influence, applying this deterministic-probabilistic correspondence to flows within confined geometries has remained elusive: how can one recover deterministic streamlines from particles advected by a random velocity that never matches the true flow field? Elegant particle-system models have been devised for collisional plasmas, semiconducting crystals, globular clusters, and biological microswimmers, yet they depart from the original intent of representing the solution as an expectation of sources propagated by a single process. Here, we show that Feynman-Kac's theory can be rigorously extended to nonlinear dynamics with drift, staying true to its probabilistic origin. This yields novel propagator representations and forges a convergence of ideas across applied mathematics, computer graphics, and engineering communities tackling complex geometries.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_08215
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nonlinear Drift in Feynman-Kac Theory: Preserving Early Probabilistic Insights
Yaacoub, Daniel
Blanco, Stéphane
Cornet, Jean-François
Dauchet, Jérémi
Fournier, Richard
Vourc'h, Thomas
Statistical Mechanics
In 1905, Einstein's theory of Brownian motion supported the molecular basis of the diffusion equation and introduced two complementary viewpoints: a deterministic field description and a probabilistic formulation based on stochastic particle ensembles. The consequences were far-reaching in the development of key concepts of modern physics such as wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics. In the 1940s, Feynman and Kac advanced this framework by casting path integrals within measure theory, defining solutions as mathematical expectations and extending the method to a broad class of differential operators. Despite its influence, applying this deterministic-probabilistic correspondence to flows within confined geometries has remained elusive: how can one recover deterministic streamlines from particles advected by a random velocity that never matches the true flow field? Elegant particle-system models have been devised for collisional plasmas, semiconducting crystals, globular clusters, and biological microswimmers, yet they depart from the original intent of representing the solution as an expectation of sources propagated by a single process. Here, we show that Feynman-Kac's theory can be rigorously extended to nonlinear dynamics with drift, staying true to its probabilistic origin. This yields novel propagator representations and forges a convergence of ideas across applied mathematics, computer graphics, and engineering communities tackling complex geometries.
title Nonlinear Drift in Feynman-Kac Theory: Preserving Early Probabilistic Insights
topic Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.08215