Straightforward Derivation of the Schr\"odinger Equation from Classical Mechanics and the Planck Postulate
Abstract
According to the widely accepted notion, the Schr\"odinger equation (SE) is not derivable in principle. Contrary to this belief, we present here a straightforward derivation of SE. It is based on only two fundamentals of mechanics: the classical Hamilton-Jacobi equation(HJE) and the Planck postulate about the discrete transfer of energy at micro-scales. Our approach is drastically different from the other published derivations of SE which either employ an ad hoc underlying assumption about the probabilistic or the statistical nature of the micro-scale phenomena, or rely on the prior knowledge of SE and arrive at it by introducing a new postulate - neither present in classical mechanics nor following from experiments - with a suitable but physically unjustifiable choice of a key arbitrary constant.
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