Symplectic quantization and the Feynman propagator: a new real-time numerical approach to lattice field theory

We present here the first numerical test of symplectic quantization, a new approach to quantum field theory. Symplectic quantization is characterized by the possibility to sample quantum fluctuations of relativistic fields by means of a deterministic dynamics generated by Hamilton-like equations, the latter evolving with respect to an additional time parameter τ. In the present work we study numerically the symplectic quantization dynamics for a real scalar field in 1+1 space-time dimensions and with λ φ⁴ non-linear interaction. We find that for λ 1 the Fourier spectrum of the two-point correlation function obtained numerically reproduces qualitatively well the shape of the Feynman propagator. Within symplectic quantization the expectation over quantum fluctuations is computed as a dynamical average along the trajectories parametrized by the intrinsic time τ. As a numerical strategy to study quantum fluctuations of fields directly in Lorentzian space-time, we believe that symplectic quantization will be of key importance for the study of non-equilibrium relaxational dynamics in quantum field theory and the phenomenology of metastable bound states with very short life-time, something usually not accessible by numerical methods based on Euclidean field theory.