Time and Gravity: A Coherence-Based Reconstruction of Gravitational Dynamics

This paper proposes a coherence-based account of gravitation in which gravitational phenomena arise from spatial variation in a local temporal coherence window, denoted \tau_{\mathrm{grav}}(x). The central claim is that finite temporal coherence is not merely a feature of quantum measurement, but a physical constraint whose spatial structure governs motion. Regions of higher mass–energy density are associated with shorter coherence windows, and gradients in \tau_{\mathrm{grav}}(x) bias physical evolution in a manner that reproduces gravitational attraction. Gravitational influence is incorporated through a modified Schrödinger–Lindblad framework in which the decoherence rate depends on position via \Gamma(x) = 1 / \tau_{\mathrm{grav}}(x). While the ensemble-averaged dynamics exhibit survival bias, directional motion arises at the level of conditioned stochastic trajectories, where localization events occur with spatially varying frequency. In this regime, an effective acceleration emerges proportional to the gradient of the inverse coherence window, a_{\mathrm{cond}}(x) \propto \nabla \!\left( \frac{1}{\tau_{\mathrm{grav}}(x)} \right), yielding coherence-gradient descent toward regions of shorter temporal binding. The framework recovers free-fall motion as \tau-equilibrium paths, accounts for gravitational time dilation through coherence-window compression, and reproduces the Newtonian limit via the identification \tau_{\mathrm{grav}} \propto \sqrt{g_{00}}. It further predicts coherence-dependent deviations from geodesic universality, clock-type sensitivity in gravitational redshift, and the possibility of laboratory-engineered coherence gradients producing gravitational analogs. These results support a reinterpretation of gravitation as an emergent consequence of finite temporal coherence rather than a primitive force or purely geometric postulate. The theory yields concrete, falsifiable predictions and offers a temporal-coherence foundation from which spacetime curvature may be understood to arise.