Diagram expansions in classical stochastic field theory. I. Regularisations, stochastic calculus and causal Wick's theorem
- Abstract: We aim to establish a link between path-integral formulations of quantum and classical field theories via diagram expansions. This link should result in an independent constructive characterisation of the measure in Feynman path integrals in terms of a stochastic differential equation (SDE) and also in the possibility of applying methods of quantum field theory to classical stochastic problems. As a first step we derive in the present paper a formal solution to an arbitrary c-number SDE in a form which coincides with that of Wick's theorem for interacting bosonic quantum fields. We show that the choice of stochastic calculus in the SDE may be regarded as a result of regularisation, which in turn removes ultraviolet divergences from the corresponding diagram series.