Emergent Quantum Substrate: A Memory-Based Framework for Quantum Dynamics and Testable Predictions

This work introduces the Emergent Quantum Substrate (EQS) framework, in which memory is treated as a fundamental physical property rather than an emergent effect of environmental interactions. Within this approach, physical observables such as time, space, energy, and mass are interpreted as arising from the structure and persistence of correlations in an underlying substrate. Interactions generate memory structures whose organization defines effective physical quantities. At the formal level, the framework is described through non-Markovian dynamics governed by memory kernels, leading to a generalized integro-differential formulation that extends standard quantum evolution while recovering the Markovian limit in appropriate regimes. A central aspect of the EQS framework is its connection to experimentally testable predictions. In particular, the theory motivates the possibility that systems prepared through different interaction histories, but brought to identical final conditions, may exhibit distinct dynamical behavior. A concrete realization of this idea is developed in a separate work, where history-dependent quantum tunneling is proposed as an experimentally accessible signature of intrinsic memory effects. This work provides a conceptual and formal foundation for exploring the role of intrinsic memory in quantum systems and establishes a bridge between theoretical formulation and laboratory-scale validation.