Local time of Levy random walks: a path integral approach

Abstract

Local time of a stochastic process quantifies the amount of time that sample trajectories $x(\tau)$ spend in the vicinity of an arbitrary point $x$. For a generic Hamiltonian, we employ the phase-space path-integral representation of random walk transition probabilities in order to quantify the properties of the local time. For time-independent systems, the resolvent of the Hamiltonian operator proves to be a central tool for this purpose. In particular, we focus on local times of Levy random walks (or Levy flights), which correspond to fractional diffusion equations.