Individual Completion of Metastable Decay: A Constructive Program after Einstein's Reply to Criticisms

Abstract
Einstein's 1949 Reply to Criticisms does not propose a hidden-variable dressing of the existing quantum
formalism. It states a successor-theory demand: a complete description of the individual situation whose laws,
per se, have nothing to do with statistics; statistical quantum theory would then stand to that description as
statistical mechanics stands to classical mechanics. This paper converts that demand into a predictive
primitive for the case Einstein used as his example—the decay of a metastable individual and the mark it
writes. The primitive is a first-event time T*(S) fixed by a complete individual state S. Laboratory
preparations specify only a coarse cell S_coarse; the unread remainder S_perp decides the instant. A
deterministic analog (metastable well plus a finite Fourier background with definite phases) is integrated:
specified phases yield a unique T*; unstructured phases yield a waiting-time histogram; partial readout of
phases narrows Var(T*). The program is thereby empirically constrained without being forced to sit Bell's
examination for local completions of the quantum correlators. Nuclei are not the first test. Characterized
analog systems are.
Keywords: Einstein 1949 Reply; incompleteness; individual description; metastable decay; arrival time; field
ontology; analog tests