Isotopic Effects as a Consequence of Compensatory Electromagnetic Field Regulation: A Unified Information-Theoretic Framework

Isotopic effects—systematic variations in atomic polarity, redox activity, chemical reactivity, biological fractionation, and condensed‑phase properties with neutron number—have historically been attributed to mass differences and quantum zero‑point energy. However, this mass‑centric paradigm cannot explain why neutrons, which carry no electric charge, systematically modulate the electromagnetic properties of atoms. Here we propose a fundamentally different origin: isotopic effects arise from neutron‑mediated temporal‑redundancy compensation within the Information Density Science (IDS) framework. In IDS, neutrons are not merely mass contributors but physical carriers of second‑order temporal redundancy that suppresses the extranuclear electromagnetic field via increased nuclear information density B/V. The unified compensation equation reduces to Eₑₘ = CZ - κ(B/V) - Δredundant(N) for fixed proton number, yielding a strict causal chain: N ↑ ⇒ B/V ↑ ⇒ Δredundant ↑ ⇒ Eₑₘ ↓—lighter isotopes exhibit stronger extranuclear electromagnetic fields, higher reactivity, and preferential biological enrichment, in agreement with all known isotopic trends. The framework contains no free parameters beyond the normalization constant fixed by IDS, recovers the fine‑structure constant from chiral topological symmetry breaking, and has already passed a precise experimental test with the neutron decay lifetime. This work establishes a first‑principles, mass‑independent origin for isotopic effects, connecting nuclear structure, extranuclear electrodynamics, and macroscopic observables within a single information‑theoretic ontology.