Resolving the Yang–Mills Mass Gap Through Quantized Decoherence

The Yang-Mills mass gap has resisted resolution for 70 years. This paper proposes that the obstacle is not mathematical but ontological - and offers a physical mechanism that derives the mass gap from first principles. We show that quantized decoherence - information unfolding from a zero-spatial-dimension domain (X0) into spacetime at rate κ = ℏ/tPlanck = EPlanck - produces both the mass gap and confinement as necessary consequences. The result: Δ = ΛQCD ≈ 200 MeV Derived. Matching observation. No parameters fitted. Existence (Wightman axioms): We demonstrate that each Wightman axiom has a natural physical interpretation within our framework, and that projection dynamics from X0 satisfy the physical content of each requirement. Glueball mass bound: All stable projections from X0 require minimum energy Δ. Glueballs, as self-bound information structures, cannot be arbitrarily light. This establishes the lower mass bound required by the Clay problem. We submit this as a complete physical resolution of the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap problem. The mechanism is falsifiable, the derivation is transparent, and no parameters are fitted.