{
  "abstract": "A quantum feedback loop that returns information from a forward simulation to an earlier internal time induces a completely positive trace-preserving map on a message register; iterating that map eventually destroys its ability to carry entanglement. The entanglement-breaking index N = n_EB(Phi), the round at which this happens, is studied along two axes, interaction and bath. On the interaction axis, strict contraction onto a full-rank fixed point forces N finite in every dimension, via an explicit separable ball around the limiting Choi state, and across 3997 sampled channels index and stability gap are one clock, N [1 - rho(A)] in [0.60, 1.50]. On the bath axis, a thermal ancilla at polarisation p = tanh(hbar omega / 2 k_B T) makes every channel quantity an exact quadratic in p, and one-sided certificates (no eigensolver) establish N = 3 at the reference circuit at every temperature. The infinite-temperature index is an architecture floor with closed form and exact measure (46.427% of circuits break entanglement in one round at infinite temperature). For exchange collisions (generalised amplitude damping) the index has a closed form and is monotone in p; for the loop the floor is not a bound: certified circuits dip below it in interior temperature windows, at a rate with Gaussian cutoff in epsilon = 1 - ||A_0||_2 (marginal exponent 2.02 [1.90, 2.16], 4.1 million circuits), and shallow-floor valleys survive to epsilon = 0.125. On a certified coupling-temperature surface, temperature moves the index by at most 3/2, the interaction by 1213/3. Applied to quantum-cognition proposals, a per-bath polarisation table at 310 K shows nuclear spins maximally hot and intramolecular vibrations frozen, and a four-input checklist replaces decoherence times by round budgets; Fisher's nuclear-spin proposal specifies its bath and storage coherence, not its processing interaction or rate.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2609.27908",
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Eran Kopel"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fjacmmyetrjwz.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2609.27908",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "fjacmmyetrjwz",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.27908",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "math-ph"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "math.MP"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "quant-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1702|Quantum Information and Cryptography"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7214183129",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.27908",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-13",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fjacmmyetrjwz.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:29:11Z",
      "native_id": "2609.27908",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.27908"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "mathematics",
      "origin": "arxiv:math-ph",
      "subfield": "mathematical-physics"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:quant-ph",
      "subfield": "quantum"
    }
  ],
  "title": "The quantum lifetime of a future-referential feedback loop: certified index, architecture floor, and thermal bonus",
  "title_text": "The quantum lifetime of a future-referential feedback loop: certified index, architecture floor, and thermal bonus",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:29:19Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fjacmmyetrjwz",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}