Time Evolution of Relativistic Quantum Fields in Spatial Subregions

Abstract

We study the time evolution of a state of a relativistic quantum field theory restricted to a spatial subregion $\Omega$. More precisely, we use the Feynman-Vernon influence functional formalism to describe the dynamics of the field theory in the interior of $\Omega$ arising after integrating out the degrees of freedom in the exterior. We show how the influence of the environment gets encoded in a boundary term. Furthermore, we derive a stochastic equation of motion for the field expectation value in the interior. We find that the boundary conditions obtained in this way are energy non-conserving and non-local in space and time. Our results find applications in understanding the emergence of local thermalization in relativistic quantum field theories and the relationship between quantum field theory and relativistic fluid dynamics.