Wilson-It\^o diffusions

Abstract

We introduce Wilson-It\^o diffusions, a class of random fields on $\mathbb{R}^d$ that change continuously along a scale parameter via a Markovian dynamics with local coefficients. Described via forward-backward stochastic differential equations, their observables naturally form a pre-factorization algebra \`a la Costello-Gwilliam. We argue that this is a new non-perturbative quantization method applicable also to gauge theories and independent of a path-integral formulation. Whenever a path-integral is available, this approach reproduces the setting of Wilson-Polchinski flow equations.