The Homogeneous Propagation Framework: Transport, Local Geometry, and Displacement Defects

This paper establishes the foundational descriptive vocabulary for the Homogeneous Propagation Framework by defining how a single underlying domain supports several distinct physical roles: a reference coordinate chart, a vacuum storage field (characterized by ε₀ and μ₀) that gives space the capacity to support propagating energy, a transport structure that governs admissible signal propagation, and a local geometry realized by rods, clocks, and material observers. In the homogeneous regime, all these charts align — storage matches the coordinate description, transport is undeformed, and local geometry follows transport — allowing the constant-speed propagation condition alone to recover the familiar special-relativistic kinematic structure, with realized duration scaling from coordinate duration through the factor λ. The paper then identifies gravitational phenomena as displacement defects: cases where transport is displaced from storage, so that local geometry follows the now-displaced admissible transport rather than the undisturbed baseline, with observable consequences for clocks, rods, and propagation paths. The paper is deliberately foundational rather than dynamical, deferring field equations, lensing, perihelion effects, and rotating-source response to companion papers, with the stated goal of stabilizing the language and chart-relation formalism on which those later developments build.