Nodal obstruction to conditioned-diffusion representations of the weak momentum
Abstract
Quantum Schrödinger bridge constructions establish the existence of a conditioned process under a positivity hypothesis on the endpoint data, and three independent ones adopt it. We show that hypothesis fails on a definite locus once the conditioned object is the two-state amplitude ϕ*ψ of a pre- and post-selected pair on configuration space, and that the failure is testable on recorded data. Whenever ϕ*ψ has a moving zero of order k across which probability flows, no diffusion of constant diffusion coefficient can both carry the conditioned density and avoid the nodal curve: the current velocity it would need grows as the inverse 2k-th power of the distance to that curve and points toward it on one side, placing the curve at finite scale distance, so it is reached and not merely approached. Identifying the weak momentum with a bridge drift fails independently: for a free particle post-selected in position the current velocity is exactly minus the drift of the bridge to the target. The positive Doob h-transform and the Bernstein conditioning built on it exist wherever ϕ*ψ is nodeless and fail on the nodal curve. There the osmotic part of the weak momentum diverges as the inverse distance to the zero and changes sign across it with a coefficient set by k, while the current part stays bounded; that boundedness rests on the signed factorization of the real-envelope class and hides the obstruction from any picture built on the current velocity alone. A measured fringe visibility fixes a single length, which puts a Lorentzian of order 10−3 into the current channel reconstructed in the two-slit trajectory experiment if the contrast is limited by an off-axis zero, and nothing there if by incoherence. The results are one-dimensional, covering the separable transverse field of a two-slit geometry, not general two-dimensional vortices.
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BibTeX
@misc{kam2026nodal,
title = {{Nodal obstruction to conditioned-diffusion representations of the weak momentum}},
author = {Chon-Fai Kam and Kai-Wen Wong},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.03242},
eprint = {2609.03242},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03242},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Nodal obstruction to conditioned-diffusion representations of the weak momentum
AU - Chon-Fai Kam
AU - Kai-Wen Wong
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.03242
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03242
AB - Quantum Schrödinger bridge constructions establish the existence of a conditioned process under a positivity hypothesis on the endpoint data, and three independent ones adopt it. We show that hypothesis fails on a definite locus once the conditioned object is the two-state amplitude ϕ^*ψ of a pre- and post-selected pair on configuration space, and that the failure is testable on recorded data. Whenever ϕ^*ψ has a moving zero of order k across which probability flows, no diffusion of constant diffusion coefficient can both carry the conditioned density and avoid the nodal curve: the current velocity it would need grows as the inverse 2k-th power of the distance to that curve and points toward it on one side, placing the curve at finite scale distance, so it is reached and not merely approached. Identifying the weak momentum with a bridge drift fails independently: for a free particle post-selected in position the current velocity is exactly minus the drift of the bridge to the target. The positive Doob h-transform and the Bernstein conditioning built on it exist wherever ϕ^*ψ is nodeless and fail on the nodal curve. There the osmotic part of the weak momentum diverges as the inverse distance to the zero and changes sign across it with a coefficient set by k, while the current part stays bounded; that boundedness rests on the signed factorization of the real-envelope class and hides the obstruction from any picture built on the current velocity alone. A measured fringe visibility fixes a single length, which puts a Lorentzian of order 10^−3 into the current channel reconstructed in the two-slit trajectory experiment if the contrast is limited by an off-axis zero, and nothing there if by incoherence. The results are one-dimensional, covering the separable transverse field of a two-slit geometry, not general two-dimensional vortices.
ER -