Photon Absorption and Entanglement Severance: A Unified Origin of Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Dark matter and dark energy together constitute ~95% of the universe’s energy budget, yet neither has a confirmed origin. This paper proposes a unified mechanism: photon absorption as entanglement severance. Within Resonance Cosmology, photon emission produces a momentum-entangled state with its source; absorption severs this correlation through gravitational interaction, releasing a latent dark contribution not captured by standard stress-energy accounting. The severance mechanism is density-dependent: in dense media, severed states localise into pressureless dust (w = 0, dark matter); in diffuse media, they couple to vacuum field modes (w = -1, dark energy). This reframing dissolves the cosmological constant problem by distinguishing between E1-band vacuum energy and the accumulated ether density from diffuse photon absorption. Six falsifiable predictions are presented, grounding the mechanism in observational cosmology. This paper anchors the corpus at the quantum threshold, complementing MRME (substrate) and Time as Resonant Interval (temporal keystone).