Entwined paths, difference equations, and the Dirac equation

Entwined space-time paths are bound pairs of trajectories which are traversed in opposite directions with respect to macroscopic time. In this paper, we show that ensembles of entwined paths on a discrete space-time lattice are simply described by coupled difference equations which are discrete versions of the Dirac equation. There is no analytic continuation, explicit or forced, involved in this description. The entwined paths are “self-quantizing.” We also show that simple classical stochastic processes that generate the difference equations as ensemble averages are stable numerically and converge at a rate governed by the details of the stochastic process. This result establishes the Dirac equation in one dimension as a phenomenological equation describing an underlying classical stochastic process, in the same sense that the diffusion and telegraph equations are phenomenological descriptions of stochastic processes.