Levy processes and Schroedinger equation

Nicola Cufaro Petroni, Modesto Pusterla

Published 2008-05-05, updated 2008-05-30Version 2

We analyze the extension of the well known relation between Brownian motion and Schroedinger equation to the family of Levy processes. We consider a Levy-Schroedinger equation where the usual kinetic energy operator - the Laplacian - is generalized by means of a selfadjoint, pseudodifferential operator whose symbol is the logarithmic characteristic of an infinitely divisible law. The Levy-Khintchin formula shows then how to write down this operator in an integro--differential form. When the underlying Levy process is stable we recover as a particular case the fractional Schroedinger equation. A few examples are finally given and we find that there are physically relevant models (such as a form of the relativistic Schroedinger equation) that are in the domain of the non-stable, Levy-Schroedinger equations.