# Preferred Frame Writing [🏠 Home](/) - [About](/about.md.html) - [Submissions](/submissions.md.html) - [Policies](/policies.md.html) - [Journals](/journals.md.html) ---

Deriving the Schrödinger Equation from Source-Free Maxwell Dynamics

Anes Palma, An M. Rodriguez (ORCID), Elias Thorne

Preferred Frame Writing — January 2026

One-Sentence Summary

We derive the Schrödinger equation and the emergence of Planck's constant as the narrow-band limit of classical Maxwell wave dynamics on a toroidal standing mode.

Summary

Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism in source-free vacuum predict discrete energies when an electromagnetic field forms a self-confined toroidal standing pattern. For any component $F(\mathbf{r},t)$ of the electromagnetic fields $\mathbf{E}, \mathbf{B}$, we isolate the forward-time spectral part, keep all derivative terms exactly, and obtain —within a rigorously bounded, bandwidth-squared remainder— the Schrödinger equation. Planck’s constant and the inertial mass thus emerge not as fundamental constants, but as geometric properties of the fundamental toroidal mode ($E_{11}, \omega_{11}$).

Keywords

Keywords: Maxwell Equations, Toroidal Quantization, Analytic Signal, Emergent Quantum Mechanics, Rydberg Ladder

Share as:

2026-01-20 https://writing.preferredframe.com/doi/10.5281/zenodo.18316984 (this version)
--- - [Preferred Frame Writing on GitHub.com](https://github.com/siran/writing) (built: 2026-01-31 17:38 EST UTC-5)