ΛCE and the Illusion of Cosmic Acceleration

ΛCE and the Illusion of Cosmic Acceleration presents a structural reinterpretation of one of modern cosmology’s most significant observations: the apparent late‑time acceleration of the universe. Instead of attributing this phenomenon to a physical dark‑energy component or a vacuum‑energy density, the ΛCE framework shows that the acceleration signature can arise naturally from the interaction between two layers of spacetime description. The paper introduces a dual‑layer model consisting of a continuous metric layer, governed by general relativity, and a discrete combinatorial layer built from the tetrahedral–octahedral honeycomb. Because the combinatorial layer grows through Holographic Unit (HU) doubling while the metric layer expands smoothly, a scale‑dependent mismatch develops between them. This mismatch produces geometric strain that accumulates along photon paths, modifying the redshift–distance relation in a way that mimics cosmic acceleration without requiring any exotic physics. The work demonstrates that ΛCE preserves all major observational successes of ΛCDM — including Type Ia supernovae, BAO, CMB structure, and large‑scale structure — while dissolving the conceptual tensions associated with dark energy, such as the cosmological constant problem and vacuum‑energy fine‑tuning. The result is a coherent, emergent‑geometry interpretation in which Λ is not a physical energy density but a structural ratio arising from the relationship between the HU‑doubling scale and the metric horizon scale. This paper situates ΛCE within the broader landscape of emergent‑spacetime research and outlines potential observational signatures of the dual‑layer structure. It offers a conceptually clean, structurally grounded alternative to dark‑energy‑driven acceleration and reframes Λ as a geometric marker rather than a dynamical agent. v1