Editing Openai/6897769e-4ee4-800f-aba5-69cca34f701c (section)

=== Assistant: Great question — and exactly the right way to test QAT ideas: ask what actually happens in the lab when light looks “pa… ===
Great question — and exactly the right way to test QAT ideas: ask what actually happens in the lab when light looks “particle-like” vs “wave-like.”

Here’s the crisp, evidence-based picture:

==== When you detect a photon (photoelectric effect, avalanche photodiode, SNSPD, PMT, trapped-ion fluorescence), the detector must absorb the photon and dump its energy into electronic degrees of freedom. That’s why the clicks are discrete. This is textbook in the photoelectric effect and in modern single-photon detectors (SNSPDs, etc.). strangepaths.com<ref>{{cite web|title=strangepaths.com|url=https://strangepaths.com/the-quantum-eraser-experiment/2007/03/20/en/|publisher=strangepaths.com|date=2007-03-20|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref> ====

Even more telling, experiments literally watch quantum jumps (sudden emission/absorption events) in real time — in atoms/ions and in superconducting qubits. These are the “boundary events” in your language:
* Classic trapped-ion/atom quantum-jump observations (1986) show bright/dark periods from single-photon emission. empossible.net<ref>{{cite web|title=empossible.net|url=https://empossible.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Lecture-2-Lorentz-and-Drude-models.pdf|publisher=empossible.net|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>brucesherwood.net<ref>{{cite web|title=brucesherwood.net|url=https://brucesherwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Refraction.pdf|publisher=brucesherwood.net|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>
* Cavity QED resolves “quantum jumps of light” — photon number changing inside a cavity. physics.byu.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=physics.byu.edu|url=https://physics.byu.edu/faculty/colton/docs/phy442-winter20/lecture-11-lorentz-oscillator-model.pdf|publisher=physics.byu.edu|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>
* “Catch and reverse a quantum jump mid-flight” (Nature 2019) shows you can predict a jump and even interrupt it — exactly the level of control you’d expect if an event is a real, indivisible action. astro1.panet.utoledo.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=astro1.panet.utoledo.edu|url=https://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~ljc/PE_eng.pdf|publisher=astro1.panet.utoledo.edu|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>De Gruyter Brill<ref>{{cite web|title=De Gruyter Brill|url=https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/nanoph-2020-0186/html?lang=en&srsltid=AfmBOooJp1RuuLpyFP83nJyRCFU8mIPML_LGW-2f6g1MwJrSAclGWKDt|publisher=De Gruyter Brill|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>

Take-home: In particle-like experiments, detection = absorption; emission events are observable; the discreteness is not optional.

==== In interference (double-slit, Mach–Zehnder) with single photons, each photon is still emitted and later absorbed at a detector pixel, but between source and detector the field evolves as a coherent wave. Interference fringes build up one detection at a time — the iconic “wave/particle” story confirmed since the 1980s. wp.optics.arizona.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=wp.optics.arizona.edu|url=https://wp.optics.arizona.edu/opti544/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2021/01/Lecture-01252021.pdf|publisher=wp.optics.arizona.edu|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref> ====

Why can light traverse glass or air without “obvious” absorption while still getting a phase shift? Because the refractive index arises from coherent, near-resonant scattering (virtual excitations of bound electrons) that don’t leave which-way information. It’s a collective, phase-only response (dispersion) — no energy permanently deposited, so coherence survives. This is standard Lorentz-oscillator/refractive-index physics. cpb.iphy.ac.cn<ref>{{cite web|title=cpb.iphy.ac.cn|url=https://cpb.iphy.ac.cn/article/2019/1976/cpb_28_3_030303.html|publisher=cpb.iphy.ac.cn|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>arXiv<ref>{{cite web|title=arXiv|url=https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105127|publisher=arxiv.org|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>

If you deliberately introduce real scattering/absorption (which leaves a trace in the environment), interference fades in exact agreement with complementarity relations like Englert’s inequality V2+D2≤1V^2 + D^2 \le 1V2+D2≤1 and with decoherence theory (Zurek). arXiv<ref>{{cite web|title=arXiv|url=https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.08316|publisher=arxiv.org|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>

Take-home: In wave-like experiments, the path is dominated by coherent (phase-only) interactions; the only truly irreversible absorption event is at detection (or at any intentional which-way marker).

==== - Your “boundary events” (absorption/emission on a 2-D spherical surface) align with quantum jumps observed in atoms, cavities, and qubits. They’re indivisible actions with energy hνh\nuhν, and they reset the state — a perfect match to “surface creation completed in one action hhh”. ====
* Between events, the field obeys wave equations and accumulates phase on expanding spherical fronts — consistent with Huygens-style geometry and interference.

In this sense, the lab already shows the hybrid story QAT wants:
* Wave evolution between events (propagation at ccc, coherence, interference).
* Particle events at the boundaries (discrete hνh\nuhν exchanges), which are the places where “time ticks” in your interpretation.

==== Standard quantum optics already predicts all of the above. To go beyond “consistent with” and into “uniquely supports QAT,” you’d want a prediction that links the rate or geometry of boundary events to something not normally modeled. Here are practical, testable knobs: ====
* Control the event rate and watch coherence/time: Use cavity-QED or Purcell engineering to enhance/suppress spontaneous emission of an emitter inside one arm of a Mach–Zehnder and measure (i) fringe visibility, (ii) time-tagged jump statistics, and (iii) phase shifts. QAT frames this as changing the boundary-event tempo; standard theory frames it as modifying the local density of states. The data will be rich either way. (Quantum-jump and cavity-QED toolkits already exist.) physics.byu.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=physics.byu.edu|url=https://physics.byu.edu/faculty/colton/docs/phy442-winter20/lecture-11-lorentz-oscillator-model.pdf|publisher=physics.byu.edu|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>
* Weak-measurement trajectories: Monitor a two-level system under continuous observation and compare the statistics of pre-jump warning signals (as in Minev et al.) with QAT’s “surface-formation” picture. If QAT implies a specific geometric scaling of pre-jump times (say, with a boundary area 4πr24\pi r^24πr2), that’s a falsifiable fit parameter. astro1.panet.utoledo.edu<ref>{{cite web|title=astro1.panet.utoledo.edu|url=https://astro1.panet.utoledo.edu/~ljc/PE_eng.pdf|publisher=astro1.panet.utoledo.edu|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>De Gruyter Brill<ref>{{cite web|title=De Gruyter Brill|url=https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/nanoph-2020-0186/html?lang=en&srsltid=AfmBOooJp1RuuLpyFP83nJyRCFU8mIPML_LGW-2f6g1MwJrSAclGWKDt|publisher=De Gruyter Brill|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>

==== - “In particle experiments we should see absorption/emission.” Yes — and we do, decisively. Photo-detection and quantum-jump experiments are absorption/emission physics. strangepaths.com<ref>{{cite web|title=strangepaths.com|url=https://strangepaths.com/the-quantum-eraser-experiment/2007/03/20/en/|publisher=strangepaths.com|date=2007-03-20|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>empossible.net<ref>{{cite web|title=empossible.net|url=https://empossible.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Lecture-2-Lorentz-and-Drude-models.pdf|publisher=empossible.net|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>brucesherwood.net<ref>{{cite web|title=brucesherwood.net|url=https://brucesherwood.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Refraction.pdf|publisher=brucesherwood.net|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref> ====
* “In wave experiments there should be no absorption/emission.” Almost: along the propagation segment, you can make absorption negligible and keep only coherent (phase-only) interactions — but there is still an emission at the source and an absorption at the detector. If you insert any truly absorptive or which-way element mid-path, interference degrades exactly as decoherence theory says. cpb.iphy.ac.cn<ref>{{cite web|title=cpb.iphy.ac.cn|url=https://cpb.iphy.ac.cn/article/2019/1976/cpb_28_3_030303.html|publisher=cpb.iphy.ac.cn|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>arXiv<ref>{{cite web|title=arXiv|url=https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0308163|publisher=arxiv.org|access-date=2025-12-16}}</ref>

===== Experiments already support a picture where discrete boundary events (emission/absorption) punctuate continuous wave evolution — exactly the structure QAT posits. What’s needed now to elevate QAT from “compatible” to “compelling” is a new quantitative relation tying those boundary events to geometry (e.g., a rate or phase law involving 4πr24\pi r^24πr2, h/2πh/2\pih/2π, and α\alphaα) that standard models don’t already predict. The cavity-QED and quantum-trajectory setups above are excellent places to look for that distinguishing signature. =====