We demonstrate empirically the construction-level blindness of the standard Two-Point Measurement (TPM) protocol to coherence in quantum thermodynamic entropy production: TPM applied to coherent and population-matched diagonal states yields total variation TV_max = 0.006 across 16,384 shots, statistically indistinguishable. We establish the Margenau–Hill quasiprobability (MHQ) as the operational witness of coherent thermodynamic signature where TPM fails by construction. The MHQ protocol is implemented via Hadamard-test interferometry with controlled energy phases (CRZ) and amplitude-damping channel dilation (CRY+CX), and validated against four mandatory Kraus consistency tests at machine precision (~10^-16). We present the first complete empirical survival curve of a coherent thermodynamic witness in commercial NISQ quantum hardware. Eleven independent jobs executed on IBM ibm_fez (Heron r2 architecture, 156 qubits) across six dissipation values gamma in {0.05, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25, 0.30} reveal three structured regions: sustained ignition (gamma ≤ 0.20, SNR_diff = 3.5–5.6 with replication), edge transition (gamma = 0.25, SNR_diff = 3.2), and practical extinction (gamma = 0.30, SNR_diff = 1.46). The survival frontier is empirically localized at gamma_crit in (0.25, 0.30). Diagonal control yields exactly zero negativity in all eleven hardware runs — including the practical-extinction regime — establishing the witness signal as coherence-specific rather than channel-induced or systematic-error artifact. Topological robustness is confirmed across three distinct qubit layouts. Cross-platform replication on IonQ, Rigetti, and IQM remains pending administrative resolution of AWS Braket access. A direct quantitative mapping to the Francica–Goold–Plastina Xi remains an open theoretical question. This is the preprint version of the manuscript submitted to Physical Review X Quantum (April 2026). Raw experimental data and source code are publicly available on Zenodo at DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19801980 under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Released under CC-BY 4.0.
We demonstrate empirically the construction-level blindness of the standard Two-Point Measurement (TPM) protocol to coherence in quantum thermodynamic entropy production: TPM applied to coherent and population-matched diagonal states yields total variation TV_max = 0.006 across 16,384 shots, statistically indistinguishable. We establish the Margenau–Hill quasiprobability (MHQ) as the operational witness of coherent thermodynamic signature where TPM fails by construction. The MHQ protocol is implemented via Hadamard-test interferometry with controlled energy phases (CRZ) and amplitude-damping channel dilation (CRY+CX), and validated against four mandatory Kraus consistency tests at machine precision (~10^-16). We present the first complete empirical survival curve of a coherent thermodynamic witness in commercial NISQ quantum hardware. Eleven independent jobs executed on IBM ibm_fez (Heron r2 architecture, 156 qubits) across six dissipation values gamma in {0.05, 0.10, 0.15, 0.20, 0.25, 0.30} reveal three structured regions: sustained ignition (gamma ≤ 0.20, SNR_diff = 3.5–5.6 with replication), edge transition (gamma = 0.25, SNR_diff = 3.2), and practical extinction (gamma = 0.30, SNR_diff = 1.46). The survival frontier is empirically localized at gamma_crit in (0.25, 0.30). Diagonal control yields exactly zero negativity in all eleven hardware runs — including the practical-extinction regime — establishing the witness signal as coherence-specific rather than channel-induced or systematic-error artifact. Topological robustness is confirmed across three distinct qubit layouts. Cross-platform replication on IonQ, Rigetti, and IQM remains pending administrative resolution of AWS Braket access. A direct quantitative mapping to the Francica–Goold–Plastina Xi remains an open theoretical question. This is the preprint version of the manuscript submitted to Physical Review X Quantum (April 2026). Raw experimental data and source code are publicly available on Zenodo at DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19801980 under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Released under CC-BY 4.0.
We report systematic experimental observation of coherent, topology-dependent inter-horizon correlations in thermofield double (TFD) states implemented on IBM quantum processors. Using a 100-qubit ladder geometry mapped onto the heavy-hex topology of ibm_fez (156 qubits, Heron r2 architecture), we demonstrate signal ratios R_fit spanning 1.2–202.7 across runs/seeds, with best single-seed R_fit = 23.93 (Run #11) and record multi-seed median R_fit = 102.7 (Run #2, 5 seeds, range 63.5–202.7), validated by pre-registered GO/NO-GO criteria across 14 experimental runs spanning January 24-30, 2026. Our experimental framework incorporates two rigorous anti-artifact controls (see Fig. 6-7): (1) SCRAMBLE control applies identical circuit depth with incorrect topology, destroying the signal (reduction factor > 10×); (2) ECHO control (Loschmidt reversal) applies the coupling layer twice, annihilating coherent contributions (reduction factor 8.6-50.5×, consistent with expected finite-size echo saturation for N~50 effective subsystems (see Gorin et al. [14] for saturation plateau theory)). Both controls maintain > 95% local fringe retention, confirming they do not trivially destroy coherence. A critical discovery emerged from our January 30, 2026 validation campaign (see Fig. 5): quantum processor calibration drift can cause signal collapse within less than one hour on hardware with identical offline calibration snapshots. Runs #11-#12 achieved R_fit = 23.93 and 18.4 respectively (GO-1 PASS, GO-3 PASS), while Run #13 executed only 53 minutes later on the same backend collapsed to R_fit = 1.20 (GO-1 FAIL). This finding establishes that offline Health Scores do not reliably predict experimental success, and defines an operational envelope requiring Health > 80% (Grade B or better) for empirically associated with high-probability signal stability. The observed second-harmonic (2ω) dominance in the phase-dependent signal (A₂ω/A₁ω > 40×, R² > 0.99, see Fig. 9) is consistent with theoretical predictions for bilinear left-right correlations. A stride sweep (s = 2-5, see Fig. 4) reveals a signal-coherence trade-off, with s = 3 identified as optimal. Total quantum processor time across all 14 runs: approximately 45 minutes. These results establish a validated, falsifiable experimental framework for probing analog quantum gravity signatures on NISQ hardware, with explicit calibration-conditional bounds. The methodology may provide a validated framework applicable to analog Hawking radiation platforms where topology-controlled correlations play a central role (see Section 5.4). Note: Results demonstrated primarily on IBM ibm_fez; multi-device validation on additional backends is recommended to establish cross-platform generalizability.
Quantum work statistics differ from classical ones because initial energy coherence matters. The standard two-point measurement (TPM) gives a positive distribution but erases phase information. Coherence-retaining endpoint-work quasistatistics provide a compact probe of shortcut-to-adiabaticity performance. For work defined with respect to a reference Hamiltonian, an exact counterdiabatic shortcut pulls the final reference Hamiltonian back to an operator diagonal in the initial energy basis. Endpoint Kirkwood-Dirac or Margenau-Hill quasistatistics then lose sensitivity to initial coherence and reduce to the TPM result. Imperfect shortcuts restore this sensitivity: a non-commuting control error produces off-diagonal pulled-back Hamiltonian elements at first order in the error amplitude, whereas population-only transition probabilities change only at second order. Harmonic-oscillator and qubit benchmarks confirm this linear-versus-quadratic contrast. The result complements inclusive work-cost analyses: it does not measure the auxiliary field's energetic cost, but provides a phase-sensitive endpoint diagnostic of residual nonadiabaticity.
RydbergPhaseDepthQA investigates whether a finite-size witness of the recently established quantum circuit-depth hierarchy mechanism remains experimentally distinguishable after provider compilation and noisy execution on a real quantum processor. The experiment compares a frozen exact (C^7Z) phase-witness circuit with a matched ablation obtained by removing exactly one pre-provider QIS two-qubit layer. The exact circuit has 36 CX gates and two-qubit depth 27, while the ablated circuit has 35 CX gates and depth 26. Hardware execution was performed on IonQ Forte-1 through the Open Quantum platform. An independent confirmatory campaign comprised three exact runs, three matched depth-minus-one runs, and one identity control, with 499 shots per job. The exact implementation achieved a success probability of 0.995992 (95% CI [0.992652, 0.998664]), compared with 0.000668 (95% CI [0, 0.002004]) for the depth-minus-one ablation. The exact-minus-ablation separation was 0.995324, with a 95% lower confidence bound of 0.991316. The identity false-positive probability was 0.002004 (95% CI [0, 0.006012]). All four frozen confirmatory statistical criteria passed, yielding RPDQA_FULL_PASS = True. These results provide a positive finite-size hardware witness of the multi-controlled-phase depth-hierarchy mechanism: for the tested (C^7Z) construction, the experimentally observed separation survives the full path from frozen QIS circuits through provider compilation to noisy QPU execution. The result does not constitute an experimental proof of the complete theoretical (d >= 12) hierarchy, nor does it claim that the final provider-native or pulse-level schedules preserve an exactly one-layer depth difference. The repository includes the frozen circuits, raw hardware results, analysis code, integrity hashes, and reproducibility tools: https://github.com/malikberrada/RydbergPhaseDepthQA
We present empirical evidence that a thermodynamic stability metric Φ = I × ρ − α × S serves as a leading indicator of qubit degradation on IBM Quantum hardware and provides practical discrimination across multiple circuit and hardware validation settings. Analysis of 445 qubits across three backends (ibm_fez, ibm_marrakesh, ibm_torino) over 30 days demonstrates 100% detection of IBM-reported status transitions in the tested window, with average lead time of 163 hours (6.8 days) and maximum lead time of 480 hours (20 days) for warnings occurring at least 24 hours before degradation. The coherence ratio ρ = T2/T1 accounts for 70 to 78% of component contribution in backend-split component analysis, suggesting a substantially larger role for coherence information in stability monitoring than is reflected in prior qubit-selection heuristics. Cross-backend transfer achieves 98.4% balanced accuracy without retraining. Additional validation demonstrates 4.34x higher two-qubit gate error for low-Φ qubit pairs, 8 to 18x error discrimination across circuit depths from 10 to 500 gates, and correct identification of all five failed qubits in the tested dataset via Φ < 0. These results establish Φ as an early warning indicator for quantum processor maintenance and a practical qubit selection metric. The methods described in this paper are the subject of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/952,883 (filed January 2, 2026). No license to implement or commercialize the described methods is granted by this publication. All rights reserved.
Files of this version are restricted (18 October 2026) because it was released under earlier licence terms: the source code was under the MIT License. All current versions use one clear licensing: paper, figures and data under CC BY 4.0, source code under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Please use the latest version: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21134454 Standard correlation witnesses — spatial Bell/CHSH inequalities, temporal Leggett–Garg K₃, and KCBS contextuality — are known to detect nonstabilizerness ("magic") in some settings. We report a worked example, a k-resolved nonstabilizerness map of the SU(2)_k anyon braid-representation family, in which a standard temporal witness is instead systematically blind: at k=4 the three-time Leggett–Garg witness saturates its macrorealistic bound exactly (K₃=1.000000 over every state, braid element, and measurement axis, in the equal-time-step protocol of Table 1 with V₁=V₂) while the single-qubit fusion channel carries near-maximal nonstabilizerness (M₂=0.5585, 95% of the finite-dimensional ceiling log₂(3/2)). We prove this blindness as a structural theorem: the witness depends only on the Bloch-sphere Gram geometry of the braid orbit, not on nonstabilizerness, and k=4 happens to align the fixed measurement axis with a threefold orbit symmetry (Bloch dot products all −1/3) that caps the witness at 1; a finite, Clifford-generating group — the chiral octahedral group, the k=2 braid image — with a misaligned axis reaches K₃=3/2 under a two-propagator protocol. Neither finiteness of the braid image nor the Clifford property is by itself the mechanism. We complement this temporal certificate with three independent certificates of genuine nonstabilizerness — two of them long-range (a doubled-Fibonacci mutual-information witness, H=1.700979, and a gauge-invariant minimum ground-space stabilizer Rényi entropy, ≥6.5 against an exact-zero toric-code control), the third a complementary gate-based non-Cliffordness measure — an honest negative control confirming that leakage-free constructions remain strictly additive, and a hardware-oriented single-qubit signal-to-noise prediction. We further probe the k=4 dissociation at its shared d=3 interface with Kochen–Specker–Klyachko contextuality, where the KCBS witness shows only a weak, nongeneric correlation with magic. Two reconciliations with the literature are made explicit: the present result contradicts neither the equivalence of maximal nonlocality and maximal magic established for optimized magic states in a different game, nor the contextuality-supplies-magic theorem; both concern a different object than the fixed, per-k braid generator studied here. About this series: This record is part of a series of related works from my independent research on Fibonacci anyons, with Ising anyons as their natural counterpart. I started in April 2026, and it has been a long and insightful journey in which I learned a lot; the work uses different methods and stays within verifiable, nonspeculative physics. The common thread of the series is a split: Ising anyons are limited to Clifford operations, while Fibonacci anyons are computationally universal, and across the series I map what standard witnesses of nonclassicality can and cannot certify on such systems. I consider Fibonacci anyons a serious candidate for topological quantum computing, given their universality and their topological protection against local noise. A hybrid approach with Ising is conceivable, but problems such as instability and certification would have to be solved first, and each needs research of its own.Correction notice (2026-10-10). In the summary above and in the section on the certificates of the paper, item (2) is described as a second long-range certificate: “a gauge-invariant minimum ground-space stabilizer Rényi entropy, ≥6.5”. This description is too strong. The values reported for item (2) are Monte Carlo estimates of the total stabilizer Rényi entropy of individual sampled ground-space vectors on small lattices; they are neither a minimum over the ground space nor a lower bound. They show that these states are not stabilizer states. A value of the total magic at one fixed system size does not certify long-range magic, which is a property of families of states of growing size, defined by robustness under shallow local circuits (F. Wei and Z.-W. Liu, arXiv:2503.04566; D. A. Korbany et al., arXiv:2605.22424; Y. Zhang et al., arXiv:2605.15150). The long-range certificate of this work is item (1); that non-Abelian string-net ground states carry long-range magic is shown by Zhang et al. In the same section, the fraction of Pauli expectation values in {0, ±1}, measured for one ground-space state, is a nonstabilizerness indicator only; it is not a diagnostic proposed by Wei and Liu. No computed value changes. The paper text will be corrected in the next version. This paper asks whether the inert blind spot at k=4, where the temporal Leggett-Garg witness stays exactly at the classical bound, means that the quantum resource is absent or only invisible to that witness, and it finds the nonstabilizerness nearly maximal, confirmed by three independent certificates, while proving the blindness to be geometric: the witness depends on the geometry of the braid orbit rather than on the resource, and a finite Clifford-generating group with a misaligned axis reaches the quantum bound, so neither finiteness nor the Clifford property is the mechanism; within the series it is the resource explanation, where blindness is a matter of alignment, not absence. Use of AI tools: In the research, processing, and writing of this paper and its results I worked together with generative AI tools, in practice a system of multiple coordinated AI instances that I set up and orchestrate (large language models, mainly Claude, by Anthropic, inside Claude Code). At their current context sizes I found it far more effective to work with several specialized instances, each with its own role and its own harness of rules and parameters that I designed and refined through feedback, than to load a single instance with all of the material; for my workflow that would have been inefficient, though this depends on the individual implementation. I lead this collaboration: I choose the research directions, set the goals, and make the final decisions in open exchange with the AI, learning actively as the work proceeds. The AI carries out the drafting, including the mathematical and technical parts, the numerical computation, and the literature search, under my direction. The AI works autonomously only task by task, within the structure I develop through feedback: it completes a task, and at open questions that need me it stops until the point is settled before the next step. Along the way I witness and take many of the decisions that shape the path, and it is common for me to spot things that need improvement. The work spans many separate runs, and a single simulation or build task alone can take up to an hour, so it could not happen all together in one autonomous run; and had I let the AI do all of it together alone, even if it is possible, it would no longer be my work but the AI's. I run multiple verifications at the different stages of the work and one before release, including cross-checks with an unrelated AI model from a different company, and all references are checked against the original sources. In the end what matters are human eyes, a principle that is itself written into the parameters of my system: I reach out to experts after publishing for review and feedback, so I learn what is solid and what must be corrected or falsified. My scripts for reproduction and review are released with this record. These tools are not authors; I am the author, and I take full responsibility for all scientific content and decisions leading to these results and their publication.
This release presents the author-certified reference version of the Unified Coherence–Entropy Collapse (QCE) framework, describing quantum-consciousness collapse dynamics governed by entropy, Fisher information, and coherence constraints, with explicit falsifiability and reproducibility protocols. This deposit is associated with U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/945,292 (filed 19 Dec 2025). This Zenodo record is provided for scholarly citation and scientific recordkeeping. It does not indicate that any patent has been granted and does not grant any license to practice any invention; patent rights, if any, are governed solely by applicable law and issued claims, if ever granted. This work introduces a formally defined coherence–entropy control variable and associated mathematical framework intended for independent falsification and validation. The paper presents explicit definitions, derivations, and testable predictions designed to support replication, simulation, and experimental evaluation by third parties. The contribution is purely scientific in scope. It does not describe a commercial product, implementation, or applied system. Instead, it provides a theoretical construct and validation pathway suitable for academic review, preregistration-style analysis, and institutional replication efforts. The work is assigned a DOI to support citation, versioning, and scholarly reference. The work is released to support open scientific scrutiny, error discovery, and independent verification.