I haven't seen any literature on the difference between erasing the photon's which-slit information vs just hiding it forever. Erasing quantum-information is effectively just a perpetual quarantine from the universe. A perpetual quarantine sounds hard to do though since mankind would need to exist until the very moment before the heat death to keep the information isolated. It also seems that if we fail to keep that information quarantined forever, then the photon wouldn't display an interference pattern.
So I have two questions:
Is there a difference between erasing the which-slit information, vs quarantining it forever?
And if there isn't, then would it imply that the which-slit information will leak out sometime in the future if we fail to get the photon to display the interference pattern? (scary implications!)
Thanks!