Curvature Storage and Torsional Transaction: An Infratier Closure Interpretation of U(1), SU(2), and SU(3) develops an ontological interpretation of the Standard Model gauge sectors within the Unified Coherence Closure Framework. Rather than treating U(1), SU(2), and SU(3) only as formal symmetry groups, this paper interprets them as distinct curvature-processing regimes: U(1) as dispersive storage, SU(2) as torsional transaction, and SU(3) as confinement storage. The central thesis is that gauge sectors may be understood through how they dispose curvature potential. U(1) stores curvature outwardly through phase, radiation, photon propagation, and electromagnetic disclosure. SU(3) stores curvature inwardly through confinement, binding, localization, and mass appearance. SU(2), positioned between these two regimes, mediates the torsional cost of conversion through chirality, W/Z boson interaction, and identity-changing weak processes. A key distinction introduced in the paper is the difference between total curvature potential and curvature density. U(1) and SU(3) may be comparable at the level of integrated curvature potential, while differing radically in local curvature concentration because U(1) disperses curvature across large effective volumes and SU(3) compresses curvature into small confinement domains. This is summarized by the principle: the equality belongs to the integral; the difference belongs to the density. The paper also introduces a compact Curvature Storage Functional to formalize this distinction, followed by a Standard Model recovery map showing how familiar features—massless photons, massive W/Z bosons, weak chirality, strong confinement, and hadronic mass dominance—can be interpreted through the proposed infratier closure framework. This work does not claim to replace the Standard Model gauge formalism. Instead, it offers a source narrative for the distinct physical characters of the gauge sectors. The Standard Model remains the effective predictive structure; the present paper proposes an ontological interpretation of why its sectors appear as radiation, torsional transformation, and confinement. The manuscript is part of a broader research program developing infratier closure physics, curvature-density ontology, and the Unified Coherence Closure Framework as a generative approach to physics, mathematics, and emergence.
Philip Lilien (Fri,) studied this question.