Information Recording Capacity as a Physical Constraint on Quantum Decoherence

I propose a new framework called Temporal Information Dynamics (TID), designed for quantum measurement built on a single physical principle: the rate of decoherence into an environmental mode is proportional to the rate of irreversible information recording, not merely the rate of energy dissipation. TID makes two distinct contributions that I carefully delineate. First, it provides a unified descriptive language, backward state crystallisation, for quantum measurement phenomena including the double-slit experiment, Schr¨odinger’s cat, Wheeler’s delayed choice, the quantum eraser, Wigner’s friend, EPR correlations, and the quantum Zeno effect. I am clear that this constitutes a redescription within the AharonovBergmann-Lebowitz (ABL) two-state formalism, not a resolution of the measurement problem. Second, and more substantively, TID proposes that the recording quality of each environmental mode, its capacity to create a distinguishable, stable record of which system state obtained, enters the routing weight as an independent physical parameter beyond what standard decoherence theory captures. I ground this in the ABL formalism, where recording capacity decomposes naturally into accessibility (forward overlap) and stability (backward
overlap under time-reversal reinterpretation). I derive the capacity-weighted routing formula via a detector-grounded POVM formulation, connecting it to quantum channel distinguishability. Numerical simulations demonstrate that for a qubit symmetrically coupled to thermal and squeezed vacuum modes at matched mean photon number, TID predicts a branching
ratio of 60.7 : 39.3 versus the standard prediction of 50 : 50 at squeezing parameter r = 1, with analytical-numerical agreement confirmed to an internal mathematical consistency of < 0.002%. The prediction is sharp, falsifiable, and accessible with current superconducting circuit technology. I identify the precise conditions under which TID deviations vanish (thermal equilibrium, Fock-basis routing) and where they are maximal (non-equilibrium states with anisotropic phase-space structure). I engage with the non-Markovian open-systems literature, the Keldysh formalism, and existing squeezed-reservoir experiments, and provide
a defense against the objection that the standard squeezed-reservoir M parameter already accounts for the predicted deviation. Throughout, I attempt to maintain a strict separation between what TID inherits from established formalism, what it redescribes, and what it genuinely adds.