Controlling Interference Visibility via Non-Equilibrium Energy Allocation: A testable prediction from energy-efficiency theory

In standard quantum mechanics, the visibility of double-slit interference is determined solely by coherence and decoherence. Here we introduce a dimensionless parameter η = Ė_resp / Ė_main that quantifies the internal energy allocation between response (exploration) and maintenance (localization) of a quantum system. We show that even in the absence of decoherence, the visibility becomes v(η) = 2√η/(1+η) when the system is prepared in a non-equilibrium steady state with η ≠ 1. The derivation is based on an effective mass renormalization m* = m/η that preserves the standard Schrödinger form while scaling the dispersion rate. A concrete experimental realization using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice with amplitude modulation is proposed, together with a full statistical protocol to falsify the prediction. This provides a clean, experimentally accessible test of energy-efficiency theory (EET) against standard quantum mechanics.