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Suppose you multiply the values of $f$ between $a$ and $b$ at intervals of $\Delta x = (b-a)/n$ and then raise the product to the power $\Delta x$, and take the limit as $n\to\infty$. What you get would bear the same relation to products that integrals bear to sums, and there's a trivial reduction to ordinary integrals, in that what you get is $\displaystyle\exp\int_a^b\log f$, provided the addition and multiplication are reasonably like the ordinary ones on real numbers.

But what if the things getting multiplied are matrices, so the multiplication is non-commutative? I think I've seen it asserted somewhere ("somewhere" is a horrible word sometimes, isn't it?) that that is when such "product integrals" are not trivially reducible to more familiar things.

Last time I checked, Wikipedia's article titled product integral didn't go into matrix products, but only products of real numbers. If what I think I heard somewhere is right, then that makes it not all that good an article.

So:

  • Is what I think I heard correct?
  • If so, where's the literature on this?
  • And what are such matrix-product integrals used for? Or, what is done with them?
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    I have answered to a similar question here: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/468547/matrix-product-integrals/537571#537571 .2013-10-23

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I think you're talking about "time-ordered exponentials". These are used a lot in physics.

EDIT: Mathematically, the finite-dimensional case is just the fundamental matrix for a first-order linear ODE system: $\Psi(t)$ is the solution of $\Psi'(t) = A(t) \Psi(t)$ with $\Psi(0) = I$, where $A$ is a continuous function of time $t$ with values in the $n \times n$ matrices. One way to obtain it is as $ \Psi(t) = \lim_{n \to \infty} e^{A((n-1)t/n)/n} e^{A((n-2)t/n)/n} \ldots e^{A(t/n)/n} e^{A(0)/n} $ Of course physicists are prone to use it in infinite-dimensional settings with unbounded operators $A(t)$, where things can be trickier.

You might look at H. Araki, "Expansional in banach algebras", Annales scientifiques de l'École Normale Supérieure, Sér. 4, 6 no. 1 (1973), p. 67-84 http://archive.numdam.org/ARCHIVE/ASENS/ASENS_1973_4_6_1/ASENS_1973_4_6_1_67_0/ASENS_1973_4_6_1_67_0.pdf

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    +1, but I wonder if this can be made more self-contained, either saying what those are or saying in which book if any I'll find them explained.2012-08-15