Schrödinger's equation and discrete random walks in a potential field (Q1383724)

In a companion paper in this volume (see the preceding review) we showed that both the Schrödinger and Dirac free particle equations arose as descriptions of correlations in the simple binary random walk. The importance of this result lies in the fact that no formal analytic continuation was required to produce the nonclassical equations. As a result the ``wave function'' solutions were simple classical expectations and consequently observable on the lattice. The interpretation of wave functions was then unambiguous and without the problems associated with wave functions in quantum mechanics. In this paper we extend the results of the paper announced above to show that Schrödinger's equation for a particle in a smooth bounded potential may be similarly derived.