v2.18.0 - Wormhole term-order non-commutativity check (Experiment 16, honest negative result)

Tests a different kind of non-commutativity from scripts/channel_order_noncommutativity.py's already-settled noise-channel-order finding (order matters iff at least one channel is non-Pauli): does the ORDER in which the K=10+10 SYK Hamiltonian terms are applied within the Trotterized circuit matter, and does the size of that effect track the sign?

Method: noiseless Trotter protocol run twice per instance (original term order vs. fully reversed), for both mu signs, giving order_sensitivity = |delta_reversed - delta_original|.

An initial n=6 spot-check found the largest point estimate of any candidate tried in this script: r=+0.474 (p=0.342, not significant but notable). Verified on a larger sample given how cheap this experiment turned out to be (~18s/instance). Eighth honest negative result: at the real n=30 (35000 candidates screened to find 30 exact 34/11 matches), the correlation regresses to r=+0.282 (p=0.131) -- still not significant, the same honest-correction pattern as Experiment 11's mode-usage-imbalance finding (r=0.87 at n=6 -> r=0.171 at n=100).

order_sensitivity itself is real and non-zero for every instance (term order genuinely changes the Trotterized circuit's output -- confirming real non-commutativity among the terms), it just doesn't predict the sign. 15/30 (50%) wrong-signed, consistent with Experiment 11's ~49/100.

Full write-up: docs/wormhole_syk_teleportation.md#experiment-16-term-order-non-commutativity-check-run-2026-08-08