{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp05_complete_proposal_portfolio20_20260803","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__physics","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"physics_shot_indexed_debris_shield_lifecycle","proposal_index":1,"version":0,"title":"Shot-Indexed Debris-Shield Lifecycle for Pulsed-Physics Optical Diagnostics","problem":"In a pulsed-physics facility, successive experimental shots deposit debris films on removable shields protecting optical diagnostics. Each deposit becomes another layer in the diagnostic's optical path. Shields can remain active after their accumulated film has made the transfer function stale, because chronological age alone does not reveal contamination severity and removal can erase material needed to reconstruct a disputed measurement or diagnose debris production. Conversely, indiscriminate preservation leaves progressively contaminated shields in service or fills storage with unidentified cartridges and coupons.","actors":["diagnostic physicist responsible for the optical transfer function","experimental campaign principal investigator","optics technician handling shield cartridges","calibration scientist reconstructing past measurements","facility laser or beam operations lead","optics-safety or contamination-control officer"],"observable_state":"For every shield segment or witness coupon, the facility can observe its physical identity, installation and removal times, contributing shot interval, measured transmission and scatter, spatial deposit map, last calibration, accumulated exposure proxies, active analyses that cite its calibration state, preservation holds, and lifecycle state: active, review, quarantined, archived, approved for cleaning, or approved for disposal. The present failure state is an incompletely identified stack in which some installed shields show changed optical response while removed shields lack enough provenance to determine whether they may be cleaned, archived, or discarded.","consequence":"An unrecognized deposited stack can make the diagnostic transfer function used to infer photon flux, spectrum, or image structure inconsistent with the physical optical path. Leaving it active can propagate that mismatch into measurement interpretation; removing it without dependency and preservation checks can prevent later calibration reconstruction or analysis of the deposited material; unnecessary replacement or cleaning can also consume shield inventory and handling time.","affected_objective":"Maintain an inspectable and reconstructable optical transfer function for each shot while bounding contamination on active debris shields and retaining only the physical deposit records that have an explicit calibration, investigation, or materials-analysis purpose.","intervention":"Place removable shield segments and witness coupons under a shot-indexed lifecycle protocol. Assign each carrier a durable identity and bind it to its contributing shot interval. After a defined shot block, measure transmission, scatter, and a non-destructive deposit proxy; compare those measurements with the calibration state; and calculate a review-ranking score that discounts continued active value as exposure age grows while preserving high reconstruction or investigation value. Before any removal from recoverable storage, trace calibration products, publications in preparation, anomaly investigations, and materials studies that depend on the carrier. Route cleared carriers among continued active service, recalibration, recoverable quarantine, sampled archive, approved cleaning, or disposal. Keep a compact tombstone linking any cleaned or discarded carrier to its measurements, shot interval, decision, and successor. Revalidate preservation holds and test the inventory on one non-critical diagnostic before granting authority for operational cleaning or disposal.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Sequential deposits accumulate after their active usefulness changes","domain_realization":"Each experimental shot adds a debris-film increment to the shield already in the diagnostic optical path; the cumulative film may outlive the calibration under which the shield remains active."},{"archetype_element":"Layer inventory, identity, and deposition-order index","domain_realization":"A carrier identifier links each shield segment or witness coupon to installation intervals, contributing shots, spatial position, measurements, and successor carrier."},{"archetype_element":"Age and decay rule without age-only deletion","domain_realization":"Exposure age and time since calibration reduce the score for continued active service, but measured optical change, reconstruction value, and investigation value can override that reduction."},{"archetype_element":"Expiration trigger with differentiated outcomes","domain_realization":"A shot-block review, calibration mismatch, or contamination threshold triggers review rather than destruction; outcomes include recalibration, demotion to quarantine, physical archive, cleaning, or disposal."},{"archetype_element":"Dependency and reconstruction check","domain_realization":"Removal from recoverable custody is blocked while an analysis, calibration reconstruction, anomaly investigation, or planned deposit assay still refers to the carrier."},{"archetype_element":"Preservation exception register","domain_realization":"Named carriers may be held for disputed-shot reconstruction, unusual-debris investigation, safety review, or planned microscopy, with an owner and revalidation date."},{"archetype_element":"Reversible cleanup and rollback window","domain_realization":"A carrier approved to leave active service is first quarantined intact; it can be reinstalled or remeasured during the grace period before cleaning or disposal becomes eligible."},{"archetype_element":"Deletion evidence separated from the removed layer","domain_realization":"A tombstone retains the carrier identity, shot interval, non-destructive measurements, dependency verdict, disposition rationale, and successor after the physical film is cleaned or discarded."},{"archetype_element":"Bounded stack and review cadence","domain_realization":"Periodic review moves inactive carriers out of the operational set and requires explicit renewal of holds, preventing both indefinite active use and unidentified physical accumulation."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","role":"Provides the identity-resolved carrier inventory and flags shields whose measured optical response no longer agrees with their active calibration; it informs review but cannot authorize handling.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, contamination states remain distributed across shot logs, calibration files, and physical storage, so a stale shield can continue to appear current and removed carriers can lose provenance."},{"mechanism_slug":"age_weighted_value_score","role":"Ranks carriers for review by combining exposure age, optical degradation, reconstruction value, assay value, handling risk, and replacement cost; it does not make the disposition decision.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a common ranking input, reviews revert to either chronological replacement or case-by-case attention, making it difficult to surface carriers that are simultaneously old, optically changed, and low in preservation value."},{"mechanism_slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","role":"Acts as a hard gate before cleaning or disposal by tracing live inbound dependencies from calibration products, unresolved analyses, investigations, and planned physical assays.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the gate, a carrier judged unsuitable for active service could be irreversibly cleaned even though a later reconstruction or materials measurement still requires its deposited film."},{"mechanism_slug":"retention_schedule","role":"Defines carrier classes, ordinary quarantine and archive review periods, and named preservation holds, while assigning responsibility for renewing or releasing each exception.","counterfactual_removal":"Without class rules and expiring exceptions, technicians lack legitimate criteria for choosing between indefinite storage and premature destruction, and investigation holds can silently become permanent."},{"mechanism_slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","role":"Separates removal from active service from irreversible cleaning or disposal, retaining the intact carrier for a risk-sized interval with a recorded restore path.","counterfactual_removal":"Without quarantine, an incorrect dependency verdict or calibration diagnosis becomes irreversible as soon as the film is cleaned or the carrier is discarded."},{"mechanism_slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","role":"Leaves a durable record at the carrier identity after cleaning or disposal and directs later references to the retained measurements and successor shield.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a tombstone, a missing physical carrier is ambiguous, historical references can appear broken, and a cleaned carrier could be mistaken for the original deposited state."}],"causal_chain":["Repeated shots deposit temporally ordered films on a shield while the shield remains in the calibrated optical path.","The inventory binds the cumulative physical stack to its contributing shot interval and current transfer-function evidence.","Periodic measurements expose when the installed stack has become stale relative to its calibration rather than merely old.","The value score orders review while preservation holds and dependency traces prevent ranking from becoming automatic destruction.","A disposition decision removes unsuitable shields from active authority through recalibration, replacement, quarantine, archive, cleaning, or disposal.","Quarantine preserves a rollback interval during which an overlooked measurement dependency can recover the intact carrier.","A tombstone and retained measurements preserve lineage after irreversible disposition and identify the successor optical state.","Repeated review of active carriers and exceptions bounds both the operational contamination stack and the unidentified physical archive."],"baseline":"The baseline is campaign-local practice in which a debris shield is cleaned or replaced after a fixed shot count, visible fouling, or an operator's judgment; calibration records, stored witness coupons, and handling logs are maintained separately; and removed carriers are kept or discarded without a unified lifecycle state, dependency gate, expiring preservation hold, or post-disposition marker.","nearest_rivals":["Fixed shot-count replacement: easy to administer but treats unequal deposition histories as equivalent and does not preserve calibration or investigation dependencies.","Condition-threshold replacement based only on transmission or scatter: responds to observed degradation but supplies no governed path for quarantine, exception review, or historical lineage.","Routine in-situ or workshop cleaning: may restore an optical surface but irreversibly removes the deposited material and can change the substrate or coating.","Analytical correction for measured contamination: retains the shield and models its altered transfer function, but leaves an aging physical stack active and can become invalid if the deposit changes between calibrations.","Archive-everything witness-coupon storage: preserves physical history but does not distinguish identified reconstruction value from unowned accumulation or verify which carrier state is authoritative."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"Relative to these rivals, the proposal's specific claim is that the shield and its accumulated shot deposits should be governed as a stateful, dependency-bearing layer stack: loss of active optical validity triggers differentiated disposition, while intact-film preservation and calibration lineage remain explicit exceptions rather than reasons to leave every carrier active or store every carrier indefinitely.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The diagnostic owner may recommend lifecycle transitions; the optics-safety or contamination-control officer authorizes handling; the campaign principal investigator owns campaign-specific preservation holds; irreversible cleaning or disposal requires both a cleared dependency verdict and approval under the facility's existing handling authority.","authorized_first_step":"Create a read-only retrospective inventory for one non-critical diagnostic line, label already stored carriers without altering them, and run the scoring and dependency checks in shadow mode using existing records and spare witness coupons. No installed shield is moved or cleaned during this step.","excluded_actions":["automatic cleaning, disposal, or demotion based solely on the score","handling an installed shield without existing optics-safety authorization","discarding a carrier with an unresolved dependency or preservation hold","treating an inventory absence as proof that no external analysis depends on a carrier","changing a production calibration or published measurement retrospectively without its normal scientific review","using destructive deposit assays during the bounded first evidence step"],"halt_rollback":"Halt the trial if carrier identity cannot be reconciled with shot records, non-destructive measurements risk damaging a coating, or the shadow protocol would classify a known needed carrier as disposable. Preserve all original records and physical carriers, withdraw the proposed lifecycle labels from operational use, and return any spare-carrier bench configuration to its documented starting state."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Matched observations show that diagnostic drift is explained by detector gain, alignment, bulk radiation damage, or another non-deposit mechanism, while measured deposit state contributes no stable information about transfer-function validity or reconstruction need.","problem_falsifier":"The inferred problem is falsified if, across matched shield states, deposit proxies neither covary with optical transfer-function changes nor affect the response after a controlled clean-or-replace comparison, and historical deposited carriers are not required to reproduce calibration or investigate shot anomalies.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is falsified if the pilot cannot reliably bind carriers to shot intervals and dependencies, or if its lifecycle decisions disagree with blinded expert adjudication often enough that simple fixed-count or condition-threshold replacement provides equal decision safety with less handling and record burden.","risks":["The composite score can create false precision and conceal disputed weights.","Incomplete dependency tracing can falsely label a carrier safe for irreversible cleaning.","Additional measurements or handling can contaminate, scratch, or misalign delicate optical components.","Quarantine may conflict with contamination-control constraints or consume controlled storage.","Preservation holds may accumulate unless owners and review dates are enforced.","Tombstones and successor links may be mistaken for sufficient evidence when retained measurements are incomplete.","A lifecycle label could be misread as a scientific judgment about the validity of all measurements taken through that carrier."]},"next_evidence_step":"For one non-critical line, select already removed carriers and spare coupons spanning documented shot intervals. Reconcile their identities against shot and calibration records; obtain non-destructive transmission, scatter, and deposit-proxy measurements; have one team generate shadow lifecycle states and dependency verdicts; and have a separate diagnostic-and-optics panel adjudicate the same carriers without seeing the score. Compare identity completeness, classification disagreements, overlooked dependencies, and the decisions that would differ from fixed-count and condition-threshold baselines. The step ends with records and carriers unchanged and authorizes no operational disposition.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Not assessed against prior proposals under the sealed, closed-book condition; this candidate is characterized internally by shot-deposited physical films, optical-calibration dependencies, reversible carrier quarantine, and retained physical provenance.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Initial complete proposal satisfying the required problem, mechanism, causal, rival, authority, safeguard, falsifier, and bounded-evidence fields."],"conceptual_changes":["Initial formulation; no parent version.","Instantiated accumulated layers as successive shot-debris films on removable diagnostic shields."],"operational_changes":["Initial formulation; no parent version.","Restricted the first step to read-only inventory reconciliation, non-destructive measurements, and shadow decisions on a non-critical line."],"evidence_changes":["Initial formulation; no parent version.","Specified a blinded comparison against fixed-count and condition-threshold baselines without assuming an effect size."],"claim_changes":["Initial formulation; no parent version.","Limited the contrastive claim to treating physical deposit stacks as explicit lifecycle states with dependency-bearing preservation exceptions."]}}