Assertions about collider classifiers require observable evidence and a specified deployment reference. We distinguish the classification threshold that selects events from the claim threshold that defines acceptable performance. For fixed nominal-weighted ratio claims on a frozen finite population, we apply established assorter reductions and bounded-mean confidence sequences under independent sampling with replacement and a predeclared weight bound. The anytime-valid error control is per claim, not automatically simultaneous across claims, and is not a new statistical guarantee. In 19,680 archived paired audit-stream comparisons, changing unweighted correctness and its source reference to nominal-weighted accuracy and its own reference changed 536 supported verdicts to unresolved and 226 in the reverse direction. Scores, labels, weights and exact ratios were available before these simulated audits; their stopping times demonstrate no operational acquisition saving. A post hoc analysis of 30 finite-shot quantum-kernel realizations, with paired RAW and diagonal-loading treatments, describes sensitivity to operating rules, ideal versus realized references, and fixed versus recomposed margin groups. Verdict differences are not auditor error rates, and no quantum-specific mechanism or quantum advantage is established. A CMS open-data example supports restricted aggregate statements while event-level accuracy remains unidentified. This substantial revision withdraws the previous physical-interval coverage conclusions following numerical-validation problems; the available reevaluation does not reestablish them. The retained contribution is mathematical exposition and descriptive evidence, without methodological-priority or calibrated physical-inference claims.
Comments
14 pages, 0 figures, 2 tables; separate 10-page Supplementary Material (S1--S9, 4 tables) provided as an ancillary PDF. Title changed. Substantial corrective revision: previous physical-interval coverage conclusions withdrawn after numerical-validation problems were identified; methodological attribution and scope revised; descriptive classifier results retained
Assertions about collider classifiers require observable evidence and a specified deployment reference. We distinguish the classification threshold that selects events from the claim threshold that defines acceptable performance. For fixed nominal-weighted ratio claims on a frozen finite population, we apply established assorter reductions and bounded-mean confidence sequences under independent sampling with replacement and a predeclared weight bound. The anytime-valid error control is per claim, not automatically simultaneous across claims, and is not a new statistical guarantee. In 19,680 archived paired audit-stream comparisons, changing unweighted correctness and its source reference to nominal-weighted accuracy and its own reference changed 536 supported verdicts to unresolved and 226 in the reverse direction. Scores, labels, weights and exact ratios were available before these simulated audits; their stopping times demonstrate no operational acquisition saving. A post hoc analysis of 30 finite-shot quantum-kernel realizations, with paired RAW and diagonal-loading treatments, describes sensitivity to operating rules, ideal versus realized references, and fixed versus recomposed margin groups. Verdict differences are not auditor error rates, and no quantum-specific mechanism or quantum advantage is established. A CMS open-data example supports restricted aggregate statements while event-level accuracy remains unidentified. This substantial revision withdraws the previous physical-interval coverage conclusions following numerical-validation problems; the available reevaluation does not reestablish them. The retained contribution is mathematical exposition and descriptive evidence, without methodological-priority or calibrated physical-inference claims.
This record contains a manuscript and supporting reproducibility materials for “Ledger-Valid Recovery Diagnostics for Quantum Computing: A Prespecified Sequential Audit for Claim-Limited Recovery Validation.” The paper proposes a methodological validation framework for quantum-computing recovery claims. Its central claim is that endpoint recovery success is necessary but not sufficient for a strong recovery claim when calibration failure, false-carrier acceptance, postselection artifacts, leakage, sentinel blindness, or hidden discard can carry failure modes out of view. The manuscript introduces a prespecified S0–S4 ledger audit that converts familiar diagnostic ingredients—label calibration, candidate recovery, false-carrier challenge tests, postselection/leakage accounting, and sentinel observability—into an ordered, claim-limiting taxonomy. A supportive recovery claim is permitted only when all required gates pass; otherwise, the first failed stage determines a lower claim ceiling and an interpretable failure class. The evaluation is based on synthetic endpoint-level validation suites rather than circuit-level simulation or hardware data. These suites test the behavior of the decision architecture under clean support, degraded observability, false-carrier artifacts, postselection/leakage artifacts, sentinel-blind cases, correlated artifacts, and adversarial overlap. The results show a strong specificity/sensitivity tradeoff: the full ledger protocol sharply reduces synthetic non-support supportive-call rates relative to endpoint-only reporting, but with substantial loss of mechanism-positive support sensitivity. The paper explicitly treats this as a conservative claim-validity architecture, not as a new quantum error-correcting code, new physical observable, hardware speedup, or proof of improved device performance. The supporting materials document the final synthetic validation protocol, endpoint definitions, decision-bound implementation, direction-aware threshold sensitivity analysis, latent-threshold eligibility analysis, mechanism-negative/latent-eligible boundary cases, and figure/table traceability. The archive is intended to support review of the manuscript’s aggregate numerical claims and methodological provenance. Hardware implementation, independent simulator validation, and full raw-event-ledger reproduction are identified as future extensions. Suggested keywords: quantum computing; quantum error correction; validation methodology; recovery diagnostics; leakage; postselection; benchmarking; synthetic validation; decision architecture; reproducibility.
STATUS (18 October 2026). The physics programme that motivated this work was concluded in October 2026 and its claim of a unified derivation withdrawn. The results in this paper do not depend on that programme and stand as stated. Can an exact account of recorded events also determine what happens next? We examine this question in a finite quantum model with 48 preparations and an apparatus with ten distinguishable outcomes. Two reversible evolution rules reproduce exactly the same first-use specification but predict different results when the apparatus is used again. A separate example fixes one evolution rule: two possible histories then have identical counts of reads, commits and service events, yet different probabilities for the next outcome. Counts alone are therefore insufficient for prediction in this model. What remains visible depends on the observation. At eight preparations, even the complete individual-read distributions agree between the two rules, while correlations between the reads distinguish them. We classify two explicitly specified families of observations and determine exact ranges for the simpler family, showing both how distinctions are lost and how they can survive. The results separate event accounting, the choice of evolution, retained memory and the conversion of records into measured responses. They are conditional finite-model results, not a derivation of a physical dynamics or a measured coupling. The contribution is a set of exact counterexamples and classifications, rather than new principles of quantum theory. Exact computations and explicit proofs identify the additional response, weighting and sampling choices that a predictive physical interpretation must supply. Version 0.2 incorporates corrections following an author-requested preprint review. The deposit supplies the PDF, editable LaTeX with three TikZ figures, bibliography, exact fixture data for 96 two-read processes over 48 preparations, and a portable Python/SymPy verifier. The revised verifier passes 2,926 exact assertions. These are conditional finite-model results; no physical law, bridge, weighting or sampling measure is selected. The unchanged historical audit sources are available in a separately linked companion archive. Frozen audit sources and INT99 result dossier: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22541080.
This theoretical and computational preprint integrates standard QND measurement and posterior-martingale results with finite-confidence decisions and physically retained observer records. Under a declared quantum instrument and its standard outcome probabilities, the posterior is a bounded martingale on an increasing observation filtration. A precise sufficient identification condition yields asymptotic terminal weights; a binary Gaussian benchmark gives exact mean stopping times, finite-threshold latch probabilities, and a controlled population-transfer bias bound. Version 2.3 is the first public release. It distinguishes accumulated observations from lossy current memory; assumed Born/instrument probabilities from derived consistency results; expected entropy from pathwise ambiguity; continuous confidence endpoints from discrete overshoot and unresolved runs; and Kramers first escape from endpoint readout error. It also clarifies the conditional D18/D19 persistence-selector interface and the separate D1092 finite-resource ledger, with direct attribution to established QND convergence and filtering literature. The companion archive includes the editable manuscript, PDF, equation sources, a fixed validation protocol, executable independent checks, numerical results, a revision ledger, and unchanged historical inputs. Historical simulation summaries are explicitly distinguished from new executions; some older executable sources were unavailable. The new audit includes exact finite-kernel and stopped-posterior checks, Gaussian likelihood-mixture calculations, five neutral and four population-transfer boundary-value cases, and retention/accounting controls. All examples are analytic or synthetic. No laboratory measurements, independent Born-rule derivation, measurement-problem solution, universal physical selector, or new empirical anchor are claimed.
This preregistration describes a confirmatory study of an upstream conditioning architecture in a quantum error-correction workflow. The project’s purpose is to test whether an intervention applied prior to the primary decoder produces a real and reproducible decoder-relevant effect, remains compatible with more than one downstream decoder family, generates a measurable exposed-observable statistical footprint, and improves or preserves performance across a preregistered regime rather than only at a single operating point. The study is intentionally limited to architecture-level evaluation, with the public claim set confined to exposed observables, frozen transformations, preregistered statistical tests, explicit negative controls, and bounded interpretation rules. The confirmatory design is organized around five preregistered tests: category existence, decoder compatibility, structural footprint, observable statistical signature, and regime robustness. Across these tests, the central comparison is between a baseline control pipeline and a conditioned pipeline in which the upstream intervention is applied while all non-conditioning settings are held fixed. The study uses frozen observables and frozen execution rules, including matched seeds, shot counts, code distances, physical error rates, geometry, and baseline decoder settings, so that any supported effect can be interpreted as evidence about the architecture under test rather than as a byproduct of post hoc tuning. To preserve a clean-room boundary, the registration restricts primary analysis to exposed, decoder-facing quantities only. These include logical failure, an exposed defect-count summary, and an exposed decoder-difficulty proxy, along with a locked scalar error-load construction derived from control-only standardization. The study does not rely on decoder-internal state variables, hidden confidence traces, or implementation-specific internal diagnostics in its primary confirmatory analyses. This structure is intended to let readers evaluate whether the architecture leaves a reproducible footprint in decoder-facing behavior without disclosing reconstruction-level mechanism details. Expected outcomes are defined in confirmatory rather than speculative terms. If the preregistered hypotheses are supported, the study is expected to provide evidence that an upstream conditioning intervention exists as a real architectural category in QEC, acts before the primary decoder, is compatible with downstream decoding, changes decoder-relevant exposed structure, and produces a reproducible observable statistical footprint in logical-failure behavior. If support is absent, mixed, or null, those outcomes will still be recorded under the frozen rules without rescue through post hoc metric changes, reweighting, or reinterpretation. In either case, the expected result of the registration is a bounded, auditable public record of whether this architecture class shows reproducible category-level behavior under a preregistered confirmatory design. The preregistration is not intended to establish a unique mechanism identity, identify a privileged implementation, disclose implementation-specific reconstruction details, or support claims about exact targeting logic, suppression laws, subset-sizing logic, telemetry-governed control, or broader cross-domain theory narratives. Public-facing interpretation is therefore intentionally limited to category validation and exposed-observable behavior. This is meant to support rigorous public evaluation while preserving strict clean-room limits around protected implementation detail.
This paper develops task-relative reader certification within Shadow Theory’s source–readout programme. It asks how many source copies are needed to validate a fixed quantum reader, and when access to its retained measurement records reduces that cost compared with observing only its final correct-or-incorrect decisions. The reader is fixed before validation and must return a sign after each complete experiment. A trusted evaluator knows the preparation label for scoring, while the reader does not. The analysis distinguishes terminal-error observations, records with trusted ancillary information, and readable measurement trajectories governed by a shared physical response model. For terminal-error validation, the paper establishes exact finite-budget tests and sequential likelihood tests, together with nearly matching information-theoretic lower bounds on expected source consumption. An unrestricted-record result shows why additional archived data alone need not improve certification: an advantage requires specified information or response constraints. A separate trusted-seed construction gives an exact information-projection test. The central quantitative comparison concerns a fixed fourteen-copy reader in a trusted shared-visibility family. To certify a maximum label error of one percent, a trajectory-based validator achieves a false-certificate probability of at most one in 1,048,576 and a nominal acceptance probability of at least 95 percent, using no more than 720,160 source copies. Under the same preparation and physical-response promises, every validator restricted to terminal errors and meeting the same acceptance requirement needs more than 1,992,371 source copies in expectation. At the exact nominal device, an uncapped trajectory-based test accepts almost surely with expected consumption below 254,746 copies. A separate robustness analysis extends likelihood-test validity to a quantified class of conditional response deviations. Finite-cap guarantees and expected stopping costs remain explicitly distinguished. The results demonstrate a certified resource advantage from access to retained classical measurement trajectories, rather than merely an improvement over one chosen terminal-error test. Supporting materials provide the fixed reader, exact certificates and reproducibility procedures. All guarantees depend on the stated preparation, response, information-access and deployment-stability assumptions. Certification concerns the nominated reader’s decision error; it does not establish complete quantum-instrument equivalence or identify an underlying source. The analysis uses standard quantum probabilities within Shadow Theory’s research programme.
This registration describes a preregistered confirmatory study of heterogeneous pre-decoder conditioning in a rotated surface-code quantum error-correction workflow. Its purpose is to test whether, at a fixed total conditioning budget, heterogeneously distributed upstream conditioning produces lower logical error than budget-matched uniform conditioning, whether a single frozen conditioned representation remains effective across an architecture-diverse downstream decoder set, and whether performance varies nontrivially across a preregistered ordered target:non-target ratio grid. The study is conducted under frozen distances, frozen operating points, frozen seed and shot schedules, preregistered pooled metrics, and locked success criteria so that any supported effect can be interpreted as evidence about the architecture under test rather than post hoc tuning. The design contains four preregistered arms: untreated control, budget-matched uniform conditioning, budget-matched differential conditioning, and an ordered ratio-sweep arm with fixed total burden. A central feature of the protocol is that the conditioned representation is formed once upstream and then passed unchanged to each confirmatory decoder family, with no decoder-specific retuning, remapping, or auxiliary adaptation permitted after formation. The minimum confirmatory decoder set is minimum-weight perfect matching, Union-Find, and BP+OSD, selected to evaluate transfer across structurally different decoder families. Expected outcomes are defined in confirmatory terms. The primary pooled causal endpoint tests whether budget-matched differential conditioning outperforms budget-matched uniform conditioning, while the primary pooled transfer endpoint tests whether the same frozen conditioned representation improves performance relative to untreated control across decoder families. Additional preregistered questions address tunability through the ordered ratio response and persistence of favorable pooled effects across more than one primary code distance. A strong confirmatory outcome requires favorable pooled results with two-sided 95% bootstrap confidence intervals excluding 1 in the favorable direction, plus distance persistence at two or more primary distances; mixed, null, and thesis-changing outcomes are also explicitly predefined. This registration is limited to architecture-level evaluation and reproducible public inference. It does not claim that the frozen partition rule is uniquely optimal, that any specific targeting heuristic is the sole source of benefit, that threshold or asymptotic scaling is established, or that the exact coupling law, score function, or targeting recipe is disclosed. The confirmatory claim is bounded to whether budget-matched heterogeneous upstream conditioning improves logical performance and transfers across decoder families when the upstream representation is held fixed.