Lagrangian-Only Quantum Theory

Despite the importance of the path integral, there have been relatively few attempts to look to the Lagrangian for a more realistic framework that might underlie quantum theory. While such realism is not available for the standard path integral or quantum field theory, a promising alternative is to only consider field histories for which the Lagrangian density is always zero. With this change, it appears possible to replace amplitudes with equally-weighted probabilities. This paper demonstrates a proof-of-principle for this approach, using a toy Lagrangian that corresponds to an arbitrary spin state. In this restricted framework one can derive both the Born rule and its limits of applicability. The fact that the Lagrangian obeys future boundary constraints also results in the first continuous, spacetime-based, hidden-variable description of a Bell-inequality-violating system.

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