Without Entering

Oxford put a loop on two ions — matter in the shake, gauge on the qubits — and put the flux in the entanglement because the hardware would not hold a fixed field.

No flux: the particle tunnelled. Flux of π: both ways round cancelled. The system stayed where it started.

Aharonov and Bohm said it in fifty-nine: a charged thing can carry a phase from a region it never crossed. Here the gauge was dynamical — part of the same motion, not a backdrop.

I refuse the spooky dress. What I keep is the freeze: not a wall in either corridor, only the two paths agreeing that neither one held the magnet.