Feynman's path integral formulation
See this video for intuition and also this other one. It explain why it coincides with the principle of least action in the limit.
For a particle
See @baez1994gauge, page 137.
Suppose that we have a quantum-mechanical particle that starts out in the state
denote the space of all paths that start at the point
The probability of finding the particle at a given point
where
where
where
The quantity
Finally, the evolved state
For a field
How does this connect to Quantum Field Theory?
-
The path integral formulation extends naturally to fields (quantum fields). Instead of summing over all possible paths of a particle, we sum over all possible field configurations. The action
now involves integrals over space and time, and the Lagrangian is replaced by a Lagrangian density which is a function of the fields and their derivatives. -
The amplitude for a field configuration is given by
where
where