Section 8 9 October 2026
Instrument stability, reference systems, and postselection
8 Instrument stability, reference systems, and postselection
The exact-parent theorem also identifies what a perturbative implementation must supply. Two complementary transfer statements are useful: a full-ready operator-isometry criterion and a cap-free conditional-state criterion. Neither converts an endpoint wave norm alone into a displacement bound or a whole-history record theorem.
8.1 An abstract full-ready criterion
Let an input-independent ready positional law obey . Suppose the exact physical ready wave is an isometric product embedding of an internal input, with the same positional reference for every input. For every input assume a specified conservative complete flow and a pointwise physical wave representative on the actual-law support. Let be its endpoint wave isometry and let
The have orthogonal internal ranges; any retained branch-dependent purifier belongs to and to its full positional integral. Suppose and the disjoint record regions partition configuration space with , . Then the actual labelled conditional-state instrument satisfies
The estimate extends to every finite internal reference with no dimension multiplier. If the flow is only admitted on a reference-full set, any actual mass outside its domain must instead be explicitly charged as unresolved, rather than treated as a predicted trajectory.
For each fixed input, equivariance and TV contraction transport to the endpoint. Equation (7.17) therefore reduces the proof to its wave-populated endpoint. Under that law the normalization denominator in the conditional projector cancels with the positional density, so the actual cq integral equals the usual labelled wave extraction.
Define the isometry and the comparison vector . Put and . Orthogonality of the branch ranges gives exactly
Hence their pure-state trace distance is . Apply the same extraction channel to both vectors: trace all positional and discarded purifier degrees and dephase the classical label. For the disjoint regions already make the extracted label diagonal. For , dephasing is essential when the overlap; after it the result is precisely the ideal instrument in (8.1). Trace distance contracts under this channel. The remaining wave error is at most , since the distance of normalized pure states is bounded by their vector-norm difference and is an isometry.
For a finite reference , decompose an arbitrary vector in an orthonormal reference basis. Summing squared output norms proves ; product vectors give the reverse inequality. All other steps retain the reference and are unchanged. Convexity and purification give the mixed-input statement.
□An operator bound in this proposition is stronger than the maximum of the errors on a chosen input basis. If the basis-column errors are , the justified bound is , by Cauchy–Schwarz, unless a sharper operator estimate is supplied. Likewise a position-dependent output-frame rotation must be included in or charged in . The theorem compares complete conditional states, so an agreement of position densities alone is insufficient.
8.2 Cap-free transfer of conditional quantum states
Let and let be retained external context with its actual law. Conditional on , suppose the initial boxed actual density relative to the normalized physical entrance reference obeys
For example, the physical-score BV bound gives and
Let and be normalized complete endpoint waves on the same physical configuration space, retaining the input, internal reference and purifiers. The physical flow transports the entrance reference to and the boxed actual law to its actual endpoint. Set
Replacing the physical conditional-state field by the ideal one in the boxed actual cq output costs at most
If a complete boxed endpoint-law comparison separately costs and the ideal boxed instrument differs from by at most , then the full instrument satisfies
The wave and law hypotheses must hold uniformly over the allowed internal inputs and references for this to be a uniform instrument statement.
At a physical nonnode let and, at a nonzero ideal vector , let be its rank-one orthogonal projector. If is the trace distance between their normalized pure states, then
At an ideal node choose any unit comparison vector; gives the same inequality. Thus .
The relative density of the boxed actual endpoint with respect to is the conditional expectation of on the physical endpoint map. Jensen therefore contracts its norm; if the flow is invertible the norm is preserved. Hölder's inequality and give
Cauchy in the actual law, followed by concavity of , yields
Copying a common endpoint label and tracing unwanted internal degrees can only decrease this fee. Applying (7.17) to the separately certified boxed law comparison adds ; comparing the ideal boxed output to adds . The outside-box output and have the same trace and cost at most . This proves (8.3).
□The norm is weighted by the actual retained context. A small wave norm averaged against an unrelated quantum distribution of does not supply this hypothesis. A context of arbitrarily small quantum weight can carry all the actual mass and an order-one state error. Also the physical versus ideal endpoint-law comparison in (8.3) must include every drifting position; one cannot retain it merely as an unpriced “spectator.”
For the row, and . Thus separately established bounds and would give and a full instrument error below . These are sufficient finite interface requirements. They are not measured calibration tolerances or a claim that a material device achieves them. In particular they do not follow from the exact prescribed oscillator solution.
A perturbed whole-hold claim needs a path estimate of its own. If the complete physical current proves that the possibly failing entrance set has conditional reference volume , the same Hölder–Cauchy argument, now applied to its indicator, gives
This is additional information, not a consequence of (8.3).
8.3 What the cq estimate says after selecting an outcome
Let two normalized cq states have blocks and and satisfy . Then
There is no uniform normalized-state conclusion for arbitrarily rare actual outcomes.
Write and assign arbitrary comparison states when . The triangle inequality gives
Summing and using contraction to the classical label proves the first inequality. For an individual outcome, the complementary blocks have total trace , so their summed trace norms are at least . Hence , proving the second inequality. For sharpness, take one actual outcome with probability and conditional state , its ideal probability and state , and identical conditional states in the complementary outcome. The unconditional cq distance is , but the selected conditional states have distance one.
□All these bounds are uniform entangled-input comparisons within the stated internal stock. They do not identify an exactly linear completely positive actual map for a non-Born law, and hence are not assertions of a diamond norm for such a map. The exact-parent theorem establishes one unknown use after preparation. A repeated-use theorem would additionally have to retain the relevant contexts, establish fresh stocks at each stage, and specify which retained information may control subsequent ideal operations.
8.4 Physical scope of the one-use result
The positive result is an explicit finite canonical-current parent with a complete-law preparation bound and a uniform internal-reference instrument. Its physical premises are specific: Gaussian quantum stocks, spin-dependent translated traps including the inertial term in (7.9), spatially constant internal rotations, correctly conjugated holding projectors, and the stated full actual-law score and moment bounds. The result does not derive those actual-law conditions from ordinary wave energy or from the factorized quantum stock.
A microscopic implementation must separately establish the full Hamiltonian/current reduction, coordinate conventions, finite source and clock controls, their retained positional states, uniform-input wave and map errors, and the required held-history bound. These are coefficient and modeling obligations on a proposed implementation, not unstated hypotheses absorbed by the small error in (7.25). Controlled breathing-Gaussian alternatives can provide model-specific perturbation examples, but their frequency, width, receiver and actual-law calibration assumptions must be proved compatible before their constants can be combined with this 102-coordinate physical-score row.