Replica evolution of classical fields in 4+1D spacetime toward real-time dynamics of quantum fields

Abstract

Abstract Real-time evolution of replicas of classical fields is proposed as an approximate simulator of real-time quantum field dynamics at finite temperatures. We consider $N$ classical field configurations, $(\phi_{{\tau{\boldsymbol{x}}}},\pi_{{\tau{\boldsymbol{x}}}}) (\tau=0,1,\ldots, N-1)$, dubbed as replicas, which interact with each other via $\tau$-derivative terms and evolve with the classical equation of motion. The partition function of replicas is found to be proportional to that of a quantum field in the imaginary-time formalism. Since the replica index can be regarded as the imaginary-time index, replica evolution is technically the same as the molecular dynamics part of hybrid Monte Carlo sampling. Then the replica configurations should reproduce the correct quantum equilibrium distribution after long time evolution. At the same time, evolution of the replica-index average of field variables is described by the classical equation of motion when the fluctuations are small. In order to examine the real-time propagation properties of replicas, we first discuss replica evolution in quantum mechanics. Statistical averages of observables are precisely obtained by the initial condition average of replica evolution, and the time evolution of the unequal-time correlation function, $\langle x(t) x(t')\rangle$, in a harmonic oscillator is also described well by the replica evolution in the range $T/\omega > 0.5$. Next, we examine the statistical and dynamical properties of the $\phi^4$ theory in 4+1D spacetime, which contains three spatial, one replica index or imaginary time, and one real time. We note that the Rayleigh–Jeans divergence can be removed in replica evolution with $N \geq 2$ when the mass counterterm is taken into account. We also find that the thermal mass obtained from the unequal-time correlation function at zero momentum grows as a function of the coupling as in the perturbative estimate in the small coupling region.