Two-state generator extraction: property currents and a two-layer arrow of time in pre- and post-selected quantum dynamics
Abstract
Conditioning on both past and future assigns intermediate-time properties a causal observer does not; these time-symmetric assignments obey exact symmetry theorems and are measurable from trajectories. We use two-state generator extended dynamic mode decomposition (gEDMD): because weak values obey exactly, generator extraction, with an exact-derivative baseline, applies unchanged to them. First, a reflection involution on the pre-/post-selected ensemble splits every window-fitted friction uniquely as : , antisymmetric about the midpoint, carries the modes' boundary-condition physics; , symmetric, comes from the differencing scheme; both follow from the same data as . At a fixed inference resolution the arrow of time has two layers: the coherent-mode arrow reverses at the midpoint, the fluctuation-level one does not, dominating at every size and class. The difference is one of degree: is 34 times larger there than at the mode layer, and with the exact derivative both layers reverse: immunity belongs to the inference, not the ensemble. Second, in a lattice interferometer conditioned only at its ports, the quantum Cheshire-cat structure emerges unimposed: particle and polarization obey separate continuity equations, and a local field in the polarization-carrying arm rotates that phase alone, at exactly twice the field strength, entering the generator as a rigid imaginary shift, while the particle's weak density stays invariant to machine precision. We verify the sample-level identity and the two layers from to dimensions: to across five classes; self-averaging makes it insensitive to class among those sharing a boundary modulation, removing the overlap obstruction for qubits.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.26999,
title = {Two-state generator extraction: property currents and a two-layer arrow of time in pre- and post-selected quantum dynamics},
author = {Seiki Saito},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.26999},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
21 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables