Experimental Collapse in Virophysics: Protocol-Resolved Observation, Inference, and Plaque-Assay Blindness

Abstract

Virological measurements are often treated as reports of virion structure, mechanics, dielectric response, infectivity, or titer. In practice, an experiment observes a protocol-conditioned projection of a richer latent virion--environment ensemble. This paper defines this process as experimental collapse within protocol-resolved virophysics. Its central object is the null-inclusive observation operator $P_{\mathrm{obs},t}^{\varnothing}(\,\cdot\mid E\,) = \mathcal{M}_{E,t}^{\varnothing}P_{\mathrm{ref},t}$, which maps a reference latent ensemble to the observed ensemble generated by protocol $E$, including null outcomes. The formulation separates latent-state transformation, detection weighting, readout, and non-observation, making protocol effects explicit components rather than bias terms. The framework introduces protocol-conditioned latent ensembles, collapse functionals, protocol blindness, observation equivalence, Fisher-information observability, inverse inference, and multi-protocol consistency. It identifies collapse mechanisms including preparation, surface immobilization, mechanical loading, field steering, medium filtering, amplification, censoring, and detection thresholds. As a worked example, the plaque assay estimates an effective protocol-conditioned infectious concentration $Λ_{\mathrm{PFU}}=\int_Ψπ_{\mathrm{PFU}}(x;E_{\mathrm{PFU}})n_{\mathrm{ref}}(x),dx$, rather than total particle concentration. This recovers the Poisson plaque-count model and PFU titer formula in the dilute regime; extensions to overdispersion, zero inflation, plaque merging, endpoint dilution, neutralization, and morphology-augmented readouts recast deviations as protocol-conditioned information. Thus, virological data are outputs of explicit protocol kernels, clarifying what measurements report, miss, and how complementary assays can infer hidden latent virion structures.