🤖 AI Summary
This work investigates whether color constitutes a “quantum unit” of light in human visual perception. Method: Establishing a formal correspondence between perceptual categorical distortion and quantum decoherence (pure-state → mixed-state transition), the study maps nonlinear perceptual distance distortions in color space onto variations in the Fubini–Study metric and trace-norm metric. Using quantum cognitive modeling, Bloch sphere representation, and normalized metric analysis, it quantifies how decoherence alters perceptual distances. Contribution/Results: The analysis rigorously proves that stimuli near a common eigenstate undergo perceptual distance contraction (enhanced similarity) post-decoherence, whereas stimuli straddling two eigenstates exhibit distance expansion (enhanced discriminability). Introducing the paradigm “perception as decoherence,” the framework successfully reproduces classic categorical perception distortions in light/dark color dichotomies. This yields a computationally tractable, quantum-structured theoretical foundation for perceptual science.
📝 Abstract
We show that colors are light quanta for human visual perception in a similar way as photons are light quanta for physical measurements of light waves. Our result relies on the identification in the quantum measurement process itself of the warping mechanism which is characteristic of human perception. This warping mechanism makes stimuli classified into the same category perceived as more similar, while stimuli classified into different m categories are perceived as more different. In the quantum measurement process, the warping takes place between the pure states, which play the role played for human perception by the stimuli, and the density states after decoherence, which play the role played for human perception by the percepts. We use the natural metric for pure states, namely the normalized Fubini Study metric to measure distances between pure states, and the natural metric for density states, namely the normalized trace-class metric, to measure distances between density states. We then show that when pure states lie within a well-defined region surrounding an eigenstate, the quantum measurement, namely the process of decoherence, contracts the distance between these pure states, while the reverse happens for pure states lying in a well-defined region between two eigenstates, for which the quantum measurement causes a dilation. We elaborate as an example the situation of a two-dimensional quantum measurement described by the Bloch model and apply it to the situation of two colors 'Light' and 'Dark'. We argue that this analogy of warping, on the one hand in human perception and on the other hand in the quantum measurement process, makes colors to be quanta of light for human vision.