Physical Propagation as Spectral Dynamics of Unitary Operators: Bilocal Structure, Homogeneity, and Spectral Diagonalization
Jonatan P. camargo
Abstract
We present a structural formulation of physical dynamics in which time evolution is directly described by a unitary propagation operator, rather than being primarily introduced by continuous differential equations. Starting from the relationship between action and phase, $\phi=S/\hbar$, and the variational construction of self-adjoint structural operators, it is shown that propagation can be exactly expressed through a bilocal kernel $W(x,y)$ associated with an operator $\hat W=f(\hat H)$, with $\hat H=\hat H^\dagger$. We demonstrate that the structural homogeneity of the kernel, characterized by the condition $W(x,y)=W(x-y)$, implies the spectral diagonalization of the propagation operator. In this regime, the evolution becomes decoupled between modes, and the absence of spectral mixing provides a minimal structural expression of conservation. It is further shown that the off-diagonal structure of the bilocal kernel completely determines the connectivity of propagation between states, allowing the effective locality of the dynamics to be characterized in terms of the support of $W(x,y)$. The analysis establishes, in a controlled manner, the relationship between the bilocal description and the Lagrangian formulation, indicating that the operatorial structure replaces, at the considered level, the need for a continuous sum over trajectories, without excluding its recovery as an effective limit in appropriate regimes. The obtained results show that dynamics can be entirely organized in terms of the propagation operator and its spectral decomposition, in which the nodal representation and the spectral representation emerge as complementary descriptions of the same structure. The scope of this work is strictly structural: it does not propose a complete reconstruction of quantum mechanics, nor a general gravitational theory, nor a formulation for multiparticle systems or measurement processes. The objective is to establish a minimal layer in which physical propagation is encoded by the unitary operator and its spectral structure.