Born rule and Schrödinger equation from first principles

Abstract

A concise review of the derivation of the Born rule and Schrödinger equation from first principles is provided. The starting point is a formalization of fundamental notions of measurement and composition, leading to a general framework for physical theories known as the positive formalism. Consecutively adding notions of spacetime, locality, absolute time and causality recovers the well established convex operational framework for classical and quantum theory. Requiring the partially ordered vector space of states to be an anti-lattice one obtains quantum theory in its standard formulation. This includes Born rule and Schrödinger equation.

9 pages, contribution to the proceedings of the conference "DICE 2018" (Castiglioncello, 2018); v2: typos corrected, references updated