From Possibility to Measurement - Fundation of a Structural-Realist Ontology of Physical Reality

We present a minimal ontological framework — the Quantum Reality Framework (QRF) — that motivates and constrains central structural features of quantum mechanics from a single primitive: possibility with actualization possibility and actualization disposition, all three inseparable. The ontological space forms a continuous gradient structured by actualization degree α. PS (α = 0) and RS (α → 1) are limit values of this continuum, never fully reached in nature. QS (0 < α < 1) is the only ontologically complete domain — the primitive is its α→0 limit, classicality its α→1 limit. QS is equipped with a compatibility function kappa: S x S -> [0,1] carrying no metric and no separable tensor structure. A five-stage actualization sequence derives phase, energy, and metric time geometrically from simultaneous being-points. The central structural result: the triadic geometry of Stage 3 imposes three constraints on the phase parameter (continuity, additivity, periodicity) that uniquely determine U(1) as the phase group by Lie group theory. The representation exp(i*phi) follows as the unique norm-preserving homomorphism. Interference arises as a structural necessity, not a postulate. The squared modulus emerges as the minimal phase-invariant, interference-capable probability functional. Linearity is not postulated but emerges as a consistency condition of compatibility-weighted phase composition. Schrodinger-type unitary dynamics emerges from time-translation invariance via Noether, conditional on the bridge from ordinal to metric time (O9). In QRF, time is ontically only the local present; past is trace, future is projection, and the coherence time τ is a structural property of the present κ-configuration rather than a fundamental temporal interval: τ ~ ℏ/E, making classicality a direct function of the compatibility strength κ. Three spatial dimensions emerge as the first stable saturation point. The framework proposes the testable prediction gamma_obs/kappa = E/hbar. A structural connection to the dimensionless ratios of natural constants is the deepest open problem. The present work is a constrained research program, not a completed theory.