Jump-Diffusion Stochastic Quantization for Euclidean Lattice Field Theories

Abstract: We construct the natural generalization of stochastic quantization (in the Markovian sense) by considering jump-diffusion processes. This class of stochastic processes exhibits non-continuous paths, so-called Lévy flights. In the presence of jumps, action landscapes with barriers can be efficiently explored, improving and even restoring ergodicity where traditional diffusion approaches become inefficient. We explore different strategies for constructing efficient jump updates, which we deploy to address the benchmark problem of topological freezing in 2d U(1) gauge theory.