Irreversible Information Gain as the Physical Origin of Differentiation in the Quantum Double-Slit Experiment

We present a differentiation-based account of wave-particle behavior in the quantumdouble-slit experiment grounded in irreversible information gain rather than observerdependentcollapse or epistemic uncertainty. Treating the electron as a real physicalexcitation, we show that interference persists when all system–environmentcorrelations remain reversible, and is destroyed precisely when irreversible recordsare formed in nature—whether via detector clicks or detector non-clicks. Usingdensity matrices and reduced states, we analyze three canonical cases: no which-pathdetection, detection at both slits, and the single-detector “negative-result”configuration. The framework aligns with decoherence theory while providing asharper conceptual criterion for differentiation, and it naturally explains recent highprecisionexperimental results without modifying unitary quantum dynamics.