The Ignition Inventory: Defect Energy and Static Topology

A pre-geometric framework established by the companion papers derives cosmological structure from a simplicial tessellation refined by Pachner moves, with the cosmological saddle an S⁴ instanton and matter sourced by its topological defects, with failed refinements carrying conical (deficit-angle) curvature. This paper develops the framework's energy content. The defect-free saddle produces a thermal radiation bath (the unperturbed CMB); the defects source the dominant matter through the electric-magnetic decomposition of their defect curvature -- the electric channel (1/6 per defect) sourcing what cosmology measures as baryons, the magnetic channel (5/6) sourcing cold dark matter. Several predictions are parameter-free and meet observation: the baryon-to-matter ratio Ω_b/Ω_m = (1/6)(15/16) = 5/32 and the equivalent dark-to-baryon ratio Ω_dm/Ω_b = 27/5 = 5.40 (observed 5.36), from the bivector partition E:H = 1:5 modulated by a chirality projection from the K₅ intertwiner (both contingent on how the framework's own parity-even remainder is assigned; the alternative assignment, giving 3/19 and 16/3, is also observation-consistent); and the galactic acceleration scale g_† = (1/6) c H₀, a first-principles derivation of the coefficient setting the MOND scale a₀ ≈ cH₀ (the mechanism being geometric halos under standard gravity, not modified dynamics, so the match is a coincidence of two physically distinct accelerations, with the RAR's shape and tightness inherited as the standing ΛCDM puzzle rather than resolved in MOND's manner); and (with the companion papers) the scalar spectral index n_s = 1 − ln2/(2π²) = 0.96489. With the framework-derived parameters (n_s, α_s, ω_cdm) as inputs, standard CLASS reproduces the Planck 2018 binned TT spectrum at χ²/ν = 0.99 across 83 bins, parameter-free — though by construction a consistency check rather than independent evidence, since standard transfer reproduces the acoustic structure once the inputs are fixed. The framework's sharpest falsifiable prediction is the tensor-to-scalar ratio r = 0.033943 (companion papers), at the current BICEP/Keck bound and within reach of BICEP/Keck, the Simons Observatory, and LiteBIRD. Cold dark matter is characterized as the framework's permanent geometric curvature sources rather than a particle species -- observationally equivalent to ΛCDM at the perturbation level -- with a w = 0 equation of state derived kinematically from subcritical fragmentation of the defect network, leaving the abundance as a spectral quantity that reduces to a single nonperturbative premise. That premise -- whether the volume composite binds -- is now probed numerically in the Lorentzian EPRL vertex amplitude (the validated sl2cfoam-next pipeline): in the EPRL boundary state the composite's mean vanishes by parity (⟨T⟩ = 0) while its connected two-point function is positive (attractive) at short range and gapped, with the gap saturating at an order-unity value across a shell-converged sweep toward the semiclassical regime -- the non-condensing structure the fragmentation picture predicts. The decisive statement, a pole below the three-area-quantum continuum, lies in the complementary (area) sector, which an exploratory probe finds entering at the same order-unity scale; the binding is therefore a genuinely marginal, well-posed call rather than a foregone one, reduced to but not settled by a specified large-complex computation for which the pipeline is now in place. The framework claims first numerical results and a sharpened question, not the binding itself. The paper separates throughout what is derived (zero free parameters) from what remains open. The deepest open problem -- the simplicial-matter coupling that would fix the dark-matter abundance and close the energy budget -- is posed as a concrete spin-foam calculation, now with first numerical results in hand and the decisive determination specified, rather than left as a gap.