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Hamilton's principle of stationary action lies at the foundation of theoretical physics and is applied in many other disciplines from pure mathematics to economics. Despite its utility, Hamilton's principle has a subtle pitfall that often…
We study how the classical Hamilton's principal and characteristic functions are generated from the solutions of the quantum Hamilton-Jacobi equation. While in the classically forbidden regions these quantum quantities directly tend to the…
I show how Hamilton's philosophical commitments led him to a causal interpretation of classical mechanics. I argue that Hamilton's metaphysics of causation was injected into his dynamics by way of a causal interpretation of force. I then…
A dual formalism for Lagrange multipliers is developed. The formalism is used to minimize an action function $S(q_2,q_1,T)$ without any dynamical input other than that $S$ is convex. All the key equations of analytical mechanics -- the…
In this article, it is suggested that a pedagogical point of departure in the teaching of classical mechanics is the Liouville theorem. The theorem is interpreted to define the condition that describe the conservation of information in…
When compared to quantum mechanics, classical mechanics is often depicted in a specific metaphysical flavour: spatio-temporal realism or a Newtonian "background" is presented as an intrinsic fundamental classical presumption. However, the…
Many quantization schemes rely on analogs of classical mechanics where the connections with classical mechanics are indirect. In this work I propose a new and direct connection between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics where the…
We propose a new way to perform path integrals in quantum mechanics by using a quantum version of Hamilton-Jacobi theory. In classical mechanics, Hamilton-Jacobi theory is a powerful formalism, however, its utility is not explored in…
As it is well known, classical mechanics consists of several basic features like determinism, reductionism, completeness of knowledge and mechanicism. In this article the basic assumptions are discussed which underlie those features. It is…
In this paper we revise the main aspects of the Hamiltonian analogy: the fact that optical paths are completely analogous to mechanical trajectories. We follow Schr\"{o}dinger's original idea and go beyond this analogy by changing over from…
In this paper, we investigate the connection between Classical and Quantum Mechanics by dividing Quantum Theory in two parts: - General Quantum Axiomatics (a system is described by a state in a Hilbert space, observables are self-adjoint…
Classical mechanics admits multiple equivalent formulations, from Newton's equations to the variational Lagrange-Hamilton framework and the scalar Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) theory. In the HJ formulation, classical ensembles evolve through the…
150 years after the discovery of quaternions, Hamilton's conjecture that quaternions are a fundamental language for physics is reevaluated and shown to be essentially correct, provided one admits complex numbers in both classical and…
Mechanics can be founded on a principle relating the uncertainty delta-q in the trajectory of an observable particle to its motion relative to the observer. From this principle, p.delta-q=const., p being the q-conjugated momentum,…
In a fundamental formulation of the quantum mechanics of a closed system such as the universe as a whole, three forms of information are needed to make predictions for the probabilities of alternative time histories of the closed system .…
The same set of physically motivated axioms can be used to construct both the classical ensemble Hamilton-Jacobi equation and Schrodingers equation. Crucial roles are played by the assumptions of universality and simplicity (Occam's Razor)…
In their simplest formulations, classical dynamics is the study of Hamiltonian flows and quantum mechanics that of propagators. Both are linked, and emerge from the datum of a single classical concept, the Hamiltonian function. We study and…
Classical and quantum physics represent two distinct theories; however, quantum physics is regarded as the more fundamental of the two. It is posited that classical mechanics should arise from quantum mechanics under certain limiting…
It is shown that for a relativistic particle moving in an electromagnetic field its equations of motion written in a form of the second law of Newton can be reduced with the help of elementary operations to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. The…
We present the variational action principle for initial value problems in classical, conservative-force point particle mechanics. We rigorously derive this formulation by taking the classical limit of the Schwinger-Keldysh expression for…