This text defines the path integral and illustrates its uses by example. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, its sole prerequisite is a first course in quantum mechanics. The first part develops the techniques of path integration. Numerous considerations include vector potentials, functional derivatives and commutation relations, and perturbation theory and Feynman diagrams. The second section, dealing with applications, covers a host of situations, including those related to the WKB approximation and near caustics, scattering theory, relativistic propagators and black holes, instantons and metastability, and the phase space path integral. 1981 ed. Indexes. 26 figures.

Emphasizes the many applications that have been found for path integrals in quantum mechanics, statistical physics, field theory, and optics. Covers both the Feynman integral of quantum mechanics and the Wiener integral of probability theory. Initial experience is gained with solvable integrals and some of the formal and general properties developes.

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