- Path-ordering
In
theoretical physics , path-ordering is the procedure (or a meta-operator ) of ordering a product of many operators according to the value of one chosenparameter ::
Here is a
permutation that orders the parameters::
For example
:
Examples
If an
operator is not simply expressed as a product, but as a function of another operator, we must first performTaylor expansion of this function. This is the case of theWilson loop that is defined as a path-ordered exponential; this guarantees that the Wilson loop encodes theholonomy of thegauge connection . The parameter that determines the ordering is a parameter describing thecontour , and because the contour is closed, the Wilson loop must be defined as a trace in order to becomegauge-invariant .Time ordering
In
quantum field theory it is useful to take the time-ordered product of operators. This operation is denoted by . For two operators and that depend on spacetime locations x and y we define::Here and denote the time-coordinates of the points x and y.
Explicitly we have:where denotes the
Heaviside step function .Since the operators depend on their location in spacetime (i.e. not just time) this time-ordering operation is only coordinate independent if operators at
spacelike separated points commute. Note that the time-ordering is usually written with the time argument increasing from right to left.The
S-matrix inquantum field theory is an example of a time-ordered product. The S-matrix, transforming the state at to a state at , can also be thought of as a kind of "holonomy ", analogous to the Wilson loop. We obtain a time-ordered expression because of the following reason:We start with this simple formula for the exponential:
:
Now consider the discretized evolution operator
:
where is the evolution operator over an infinitesimal time interval . The higher order terms can be neglected in the limit . The operator is defined by
:
Note that the evolution operators over the "past" time intervals appears on the right side of the product. We see that the formula is analogous to the identity above satisfied by the exponential, and we may write
:
The only subtlety we had to include was the time-ordering operator because the factors in the product defining above were time-ordered, too (and operators do not commute in general) and the operator guarantees that this ordering will be preserved.
ee also
*
Ordered exponential describes essentially the same concept.
*Gauge theory
*S-matrix
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