The αLGQV Programme: Quantum Vacuum, Topology across Scales, and the Information Substrate — Seven Volumes
The αLGQV Programme — From the Gravity of the Quantum Vacuum to the Information Substrate A seven-volume programme: αLGQV cosmology, ICAST, the Topology of QCD and Isotopology, the Topology of Atomic Structure, Structural Persistence and Coherence Analysis (SPCA), and the Information Substrate Theory (IST).
Reception by Scientific Community
Explanatory Video for Public
The Claim
The 1967 identification of quantum vacuum energy with the cosmological constant was an assumption, not a theorem. Removing it — and tracing the consequences using only established physics — eliminates the need for dark-matter particles, resolves the cosmological constant problem, explains the internal structure of collapsed objects, dissolves the matter–antimatter asymmetry as a topological projection, and recasts the Clay Yang–Mills mass-gap problem as a geometric triviality on the empirical cosmological topology. No new particles. No new forces. No fine-tuning. One coupling constant, derived from the measured QCD sigma terms of the nucleon, with zero free parameters.
The programme now comprises five completed monograph volumes (Volumes I–V, approximately 3,300 pages, 80+ papers) and a sixth in active development. It develops a single structural reading of physics across four scales: nucleon, nucleus, atom, and cosmos. Three foundational puzzles — the Yang–Mills mass gap, the baryon asymmetry of the universe, and the cosmological constant problem — dissolve under the same geometric correction: the spatial topology of the universe is not noncompact R3 but the antipodal projective manifold RP3 = S3/Z2.
Authorship Policy & Confidentiality
The work is conducted within the distributed-research framework of the Institute of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Research, with contributions from a group of collaborators across institutional and disciplinary boundaries; the published authorship reflects editorial integration rather than singular authorship.
Researchers interested in joining the Institute’s distributed research programme may apply through one of three formal tracks at the Hiring, Careers, and Grants page. Confidentiality and continued institutional anonymity, where requested by the applicant, are guaranteed throughout and after the appointment.
The Volumes
Volume I — A Dark-Sector-Free Cosmology
17 papers + 2 companion papers · 569 pp · ISBN 979-8252224558 · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19027460
The Local Gravitation of Quantum Vacuum. From the separation of Λ and ρvac through the QCD derivation of the vacuum–matter coupling (α = 0.005 predicted, 0.003 observed) to N-body simulations, galactic rotation curves, the cosmic web, and Type Ia supernovae. The vacuum-capture model reproduces flat rotation curves, the baryonic Tully–Fisher relation, the radial acceleration relation (with a0 derived rather than fitted), and explains DF2/DF4-style galaxies without dark mass — all from one parameter derived from nuclear physics.
Volume II — Beyond Singularities
20 papers (#18–#38) · 579 pp · ISBN 979-8255039135 · DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29913.28002
Extends the programme to extreme curvature: the internal structure of collapsed objects, the Pauli ladder’s third step (vacuum pressure), toroidal vacuum cores replacing singularities, the nature of time inside collapsed objects, the mass desert between stellar and supermassive black holes, the impossibility of wormholes, and the pole of spacetime replacing the Big Bang singularity. Complete falsification programme for LIGO, LISA, JWST, EHT, and CMB-S4.
Volume III — Predictions Confirmed: NANOGrav, P-ACT, DESI, Big Ring
420 pp · DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32586.32962
Empirical compendium: five mutually reinforcing signatures of αLGQV in present-decade data. NANOGrav nanohertz gravitational-wave background, P-ACT CMB anomalies, DESI dark-energy time-evolution, the Big Ring and Giant Arc large-scale structures, the cosmic radio dipole, CMB parity asymmetry, and galactic spin chirality — each independently predicted, each independently observed.
Volume IV — ICAST: Imaginary Component Attribution Swaps Theory
780 pp · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20137134
A complex-algebra in the foundations of physics. Provides the mathematical apparatus for σ-reattribution: the imaginary-component swap structure through which conserved quantum-number content is transferred between configurations during topological deformations. The ontological backbone for Volume V’s strong-sector programme.
Volume V — Topology of Quantum Chromodynamics and Isotopology
23 papers · 928 pp · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20370383
The extension of αLGQV and ICAST to the strong sector. Three parts. Part I: topological origin of QCD confinement, mass as topology, gluons as quantized excitations of closed color topology, hadronization as re-closure, Heegaard two-sidedness, weak interaction as σ-reattribution, the triptych of strong/electromagnetic/electroweak rendering. Part II: isotopology — each nucleus identified as a closed multibaryon configuration; magic numbers as symmetric topologies; the alpha particle as cubic B = 4 skyrmion; structural derivation of the light-nuclei catalogue. Part III: cosmological synthesis — nucleosynthesis as topological cascade, baryon asymmetry as cross-σ projection, Λ as cosmic-scale σ-shift (dissolution of the vacuum catastrophe), the universe as maximal B-configuration, the falsifiability catalogue, and technological horizons.
A foundational paper, Paper 1a, addresses the Clay Mathematics Institute’s Yang–Mills mass-gap problem and argues that it is physically misposed: the empirical universe is not R3 but RP3, and on the physically correct manifold the mass gap is a geometric consequence of compactness with antipodal identification.
Volume VI — Structural Persistence and Coherence Analysis: A Topological–Dissipative Method Across Physical Scales
18 papers · ~537 pp · https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20455316
The methodological extension of the programme. Lifts the topological apparatus of Volumes I–V into a universal cross-scale recognition framework — Structural Persistence and Coherence Analysis (SPCA) — operationalised through the topological–dissipative analysis of stability (TDAS), a BKT-type quantitative theory of the “almost”-to-“yes” transition, and the Banach contraction structure on compact configuration spaces. Three parts. Part I: the methodological core — three-step SPCA procedure, six primitives, four boundaries, TDAS verdicts, BKT locking, and the mathematical foundation of self-consistency as the unique fixed point x*. Part II: an atlas of ten worked recognitions across physical scales — nucleon, star and its three discrete endpoints, neutron-star interior (with a predicted age–temperature window for pinned-vortex glitch onset), atom, molecule, cell, tissues and networks (introducing the double-vacuum-of-planning principle and the four-class taxonomy of substrate × dynamics), planet, cosmic web (integrating Hopf-fibration interpretation, Plateau foam, and DESI DR1 results), and the global topology of the universe on ℝP³; closing with a consolidation of verdicts, taxonomy, and empirical maturity. Part III: the boundaries of the method — a systematic study of where SPCA is silent (four foundational boundaries plus seven additional gaps), a positioning of SPCA among its closest methodological neighbours (dimensional analysis, Noether’s theorem, the renormalization group, dynamical systems theory, persistent homology), and a reflective epilogue on the trajectory ahead.
The central methodological claim is cross-scale unity: the same three signature markers of x* — antipodal duality, Banach contractive behaviour, and class–scale factorisation — register at every scale of the atlas with scale-specific topological content. The central discipline is honest acknowledgment of limits: SPCA is not a theory of everything, not a metaphysical claim, and not a survey, but a methodological apparatus that reads existing scientific knowledge through a framework which makes specific cross-scale patterns visible. Self-contained: the reader is not assumed to have read the earlier volumes, though Articles 5, 13, and 14 build on the αLGQV cosmology of Volumes I–III, the Hopf-fibration interpretation of cosmic megastructures, and the ℝP³ global topology established in Volume V.
Volume VII — The Information Substrate Theory: Information as the Name of Differentiatedness, and the Known Measures as Projections of One Substrate
18 papers · 416 pp https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20483632
The information-theoretic and ontological capstone of the programme: the lens through which the Atlas of Volumes I–VI is read as one. Its single thesis is that information is not a substance the universe is made of but the name of its being differentiated, and that the known measures of information — Shannon, Kolmogorov, effective complexity, thermodynamic entropy, Landauer cost, Bateson’s difference — are projections of one axis-free substrate along single coordinates. The whole turns on one distinction, substrate versus projection, and one discipline: never mistake a projection for the substrate. Three parts. Part I: foundations — the differentiated substrate, the substrate–projection distinction, a projection theorem by which the known measures descend from the substrate, and the apophatic categorial boundary. Part II: the classification of the known theories of information as six projection axes, related by inter-axis morphisms and materialised across the scales of the prior volumes, from the nucleon and the atom through knotted DNA and the living cell to the cosmic web and the ℝP³ global topology. Part III: the bridge — physical projection loses irreversibly while a model-building subsystem recovers the projectable structure by inference, from which follow the arrow of time as the model-builder’s record gradient, the relocation of the simulation into the model rather than the world, the incompleteness of measurement as a theorem of projective access, and the two boundaries — apophatic and projective — that bound a subsystem’s reach around a rich, knowable interior.
A family of standing puzzles — whether the universe computes, whether the world is made of information, whether it is a simulation, what the arrow of time is, why measurement cannot be complete — is shown to be a single confusion of a projection for the substrate, and dissolved together rather than one at a time. The volume is conservative about physics: it adds no equation and predicts no new number, affirming physical theory entirely and changing only the status of its quantities — projections, not substances. It is an ontology and a discipline, not a new physics, not a speculative metaphysics, and neither idealism nor mysticism; the substrate’s only ineffability is its axis-freeness, fully explicable. Its central open problem, posed and left open as a conjecture, is the morphism geometry: whether one diagram of the axes and their morphisms carries both the completeness of the classification and the incompleteness floor as two faces of one structure.
Interactive Models Reception by Scientific Community For General Public
The Core Argument — Recommended Entry Points
Readers pressed for time should begin with these:
- The cosmological constant as a QCD observable — derivation, nonlinear screening, and falsification. The central αLGQV result.
- Density dependence of QCD vacuum energy from nucleon sigma terms — the microscopic foundation of the vacuum–matter coupling.
- Resolution convergence of nonlinear screening — particle-mesh simulations from 643 to 1283.
- Quantum vacuum replaces dark matter — isothermal fits to all 175 SPARC galaxy rotation curves (submitted, Nature Astronomy).
- CMB compatibility, confinement radiation, and the gravitational-wave background from one action.
- The cosmic web as a self-organising foam — structural laws, local topology, and the limits of global tests on DESI DR1 data.
For the strong-sector and cosmological-synthesis extensions developed in Volume V, see also: Paper 18 (Lambda as Cosmic-Scale σ-Shift), Paper 17 (Baryon Asymmetry as Cross-σ Projection), and Paper 1a (The Clay Yang–Mills Mass Gap Problem is Physically Misposed) — all within Volume V. The full preprint archive is at Zenodo.
Key Results Across the Programme
| # | Result | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Λ and ρvac are physically distinct quantities | Established — five independent formalisms |
| 2 | α = 0.005 from QCD sigma terms; observed 0.003 | Predicted — zero free parameters |
| 3 | Nonlinear self-screening resolves the JWST–S8 duality | Computed — N-body simulations |
| 4 | a0 ~ √(Λ0G) ~ 10−10 m s−2 | Derived — not fitted |
| 5 | Galaxies without dark mass (DF2, DF4) explained | Predicted — confirmed |
| 6 | Cosmic-web topology unique and P(k)-independent | Proved — Banach fixed-point theorem |
| 7 | Singularities replaced by finite-density vacuum cores | Derived — Volume II |
| 8 | Mass desert 300–104 M☉ explained | Predicted — Volume II |
| 9 | NANOGrav, P-ACT, DESI, Big Ring, cosmic radio dipole predicted by αLGQV before observation | Confirmed — Volume III |
| 10 | Yang–Mills mass gap as geometric triviality on RP3 | Argued — Volume V Paper 1a |
| 11 | Baryon asymmetry as cross-σ projection (no Sakharov conditions, no BSM CP source required) | Argued — Volume V Paper 17 |
| 12 | Λ as cosmic-scale σ-shift; antipodal cancellation reduces Planck-scale to QCD-scale, αLGQV elastic coupling to observed value | Derived — Volume V Paper 18 |
| 13 | Magic numbers as symmetric multibaryon topologies; alpha particle as cubic B = 4 skyrmion | Derived — Volume V Papers 12–13 |
| 14 | 511 keV galactic bulge signal as forced lepton rendering by baryonic topology | Predicted — Volume V Paper 7a |
| 15 | No new particles, no new forces, one derived parameter | Structural |
What Would Falsify the Programme
Volume V Paper 20 catalogues approximately fifty distinct empirical predictions across eight domains and ranks them by severity. Decisive falsifiers include:
- Detection of a dark-matter particle at WIMP, axion, or sterile-neutrino sensitivities currently under exclusion would refute the vacuum-capture mechanism.
- First-principles derivation of Λ = 8πGρvac from established field theory would invalidate the central separation of Λ and ρvac.
- Exclusion of α in the range 0.001–0.01 at >5σ.
- Rotation curves smooth beyond the predicted vacuum-capture radius, or absence of satellite-galaxy correlation with group-centre distance.
- Any observation of proton decay would falsify the cross-σ projection account of baryon number.
- Any laboratory detection of CPT violation at any precision in any system would falsify the antipodal-cosmology framework.
- Discovery of a beyond-Standard-Model CP-violation source sufficient to generate the observed ηB by conventional Sakharov mechanisms would invalidate the cross-σ projection.
- Failure of magic numbers to correlate with skyrmion symmetry classification would falsify the isotopology programme of Volume V Part II.
- Failure of the predicted functional form of w(z) to match next-generation DESI, Euclid, and LSST data.
- No 511 keV signal in elliptical galaxies proportional to their baryonic mass would falsify the forced-lepton-rendering account of the galactic positron signal.
The programme is staked on these tests. Its scientific status will be determined by the outcome of the experiments and observations enumerated above.
Why a Systems Theorist
The question is natural: why is a cosmology programme of this scope led by someone whose training is in the general theory of complex systems rather than in astrophysics or particle physics?
The answer is structural. The cosmological constant problem is not a problem within any single discipline. It sits at the intersection of quantum field theory (which computes the vacuum energy), general relativity (which determines how that energy gravitates), nuclear physics (which provides the QCD condensate structure of the nucleon), and observational astronomy (which measures the consequences). For sixty years, specialists in each of these fields have worked on their respective corners. The result is a 10120 discrepancy that no single corner has resolved — because the problem is not in any corner. It is in the assumption that connects them: the 1967 Zel’dovich identification of vacuum energy with the cosmological constant.
Questioning that identification requires stepping outside each specialisation simultaneously. It requires asking: what if a connection everyone assumes is a theorem is actually an untested hypothesis? This is a systems-level question — the kind of question that specialists, by virtue of their depth, are least likely to ask, because the identification is part of the infrastructure of every field that uses it.
A systems theorist is trained to look at exactly this: the joints between disciplines, the assumptions inherited rather than derived, the structural features that recur across domains because they reflect universal constraints rather than domain-specific mechanisms. The self-similar Pauli ladder (electron degeneracy → neutron degeneracy → vacuum pressure) is visible precisely because it spans nuclear physics, astrophysics, and QFT. The analogy between the elastic vacuum and Sakharov’s induced gravity connects condensed matter to cosmology. The fixed-point structure of the cosmic web connects topology to gravitational dynamics. The triple-scale topological unification of Volume V — closure energies at MeV (nucleon), eV (atom, in Volume VI), and Λ-density (cosmos) — is the same structural pattern at three orders of magnitude that are otherwise treated as independent regimes.
This is not a claim of superiority over specialists. It is a claim of complementarity. The QCD sigma terms were computed by nuclear physicists (Cohen, Furnstahl, Griegel). The running vacuum model was developed by a field theorist (Solà Peracaula). The trace-free Einstein equations were formulated by a relativist (Ellis). The skyrmion programme was developed by Skyrme, Adkins, Nappi, Witten, Manton, and their successors. The programme’s contribution is not to redo their work but to notice that these results, developed independently in separate fields, form a single coherent chain when the Zel’dovich identification is removed — and to trace the consequences of that chain from the nucleon to the cosmic web.
The history of science provides precedent. The most consequential advances often come not from deeper specialisation but from unexpected connections. Boltzmann connected thermodynamics to mechanics. Einstein connected electrodynamics to the geometry of spacetime. Shannon connected communication engineering to probability theory. Sakharov connected quantum field theory to gravity. In each case, the advance required someone willing to work at the boundary between fields — often at the cost of being regarded as an outsider by both.
The programme has been built over twenty years with the same method throughout: identify a structural question that spans disciplines, derive consequences using only established physics from each field, send the result to the specialists whose work is used, and incorporate their corrections. The correspondence record is the evidence that this method produces engagement, not dismissal. When Cohen confirms the w = −1 argument, when Solà Peracaula identifies the phenomenological jump, when Janka accepts the reformulation of the neutrino-cooling argument, when Ellis discusses the trace-free formulation — these are specialists validating specific technical steps. The systems theorist’s role is to see that these steps form a staircase.
Whether the staircase leads where it appears to lead is for the community to determine. The investigator’s background is not a credential — it is an explanation of why this particular connection was noticed by someone trained to look for connections, and why it was missed by specialists trained to look within their fields.
The work is not the product of a single hand. The Institute of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Research operates as a distributed research collective; the formal Fellow, Affiliated Researcher, and Project Grant tracks support collaborators whose primary institutional positions lie elsewhere. A number of substantive contributions to the αLGQV programme and its extensions have come from such collaborators. Several have asked to retain institutional anonymity until they are prepared to publish under their own names; the Institute respects this and continues to integrate their work into the published corpus. The named correspondents on the Reception page are visible because their engagement was through correspondence on the public record. The larger contributing group is not visible because the conditions of their engagement do not yet permit it. The role of the lead investigator is editorial and integrative — to identify the structural questions that span specialisations, to commission and synthesise the work that addresses them, and to maintain the published record under a single coherent signature.
Lead Investigator: Boris Kriger — Systems Theorist, Institute of Integrative and Interdisciplinary Research, Department of Cosmology and Theoretical Physics. Information Physics Institute, Toronto.
Contact: boriskriger@interdisciplinary-institute.org · ORCID 0009-0001-0034-2903
All papers available with complete, transparent peer-review history.
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