On the emergence of quantum mechanics from stochastic processes

Abstract

The stochastic--quantum correspondence reinterprets quantum dynamics as arising from an underlying stochastic process on a configuration space. We generalize the correspondence by lifting an arbitrary stochastic kernel $\Gamma$ in finite dimension to a map $\varphi$ on $B(\mathcal{H})$, formulating the associated lift-compatibility relation, and giving an explicit dictionary between $\Gamma$ and CPTP (Kraus) maps. We isolate Chapman--Kolmogorov divisibility of the lifted family as the decisive additional constraint: when a CK-consistent CPTP family exists, the lift admits a Lindblad master equation form. In this picture, off-diagonal (phase) degrees of freedom act as a compressed carrier of history dependence not fixed by transition kernels alone; conversely, the apparent emergence of quantum phase information from a phase-blind stochastic description is explained as a memory effect. Finally, we state and prove a divisibility criterion for the underlying stochastic kernels, expressed as a condition involving divisibility of the lifted map together with a diagonality requirement on the density operator.

31 pages, 1 figure. v2: corrected typos and expanded the discussion in Section 6