MID/QC Foundation Series 4 — The Substrate Interpretation of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

This paper reinterprets electroweak symmetry breaking as a geometric modulation of substrate tension rather than a field-theoretic vacuum shift. Mass acquisition arises from coherence-layer–induced changes in the substrate’s curvature response, unifying electroweak behavior with QCD confinement and nuclear binding under a single substrate-native law. The framework eliminates conceptual discontinuities and anchors symmetry breaking in the same geometric primitives that govern mass and binding across scales.