Phase-locked nuclear structure I: A semiclassical framework for nuclear stability, clustering, and decay

This paper presents a semiclassical framework in which nuclear structure, stability, and decay arise from phase locking of internal electromagnetic motion within nucleons. Protons and neutrons are treated as nucleons possessing a common internal electromagnetic mode capable of synchronizing with neighboring nucleons when aligned in parallel. This constraint forces nuclei to self-organize into linear clusters of two, three, and four nucleons, with the four-nucleon p‐n‐p‐n chain forming the smallest fully saturated unit. The framework reproduces the binding systematics of A = 2‐4 nuclei, explains the absence of stable A = 5 systems, and accounts for alpha clustering, saturation, neutron excess, and characteristic fission fragment patterns. Heavy nuclei emerge as networks of saturated four-nucleon clusters connected by weaker neutron-mediated links. The same phase-locking mechanism previously shown to govern atomic orbital quantization thus governs nuclear architecture across the chart of nuclides, without introducing new fundamental forces.