THIS VERSION HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED — pending revised analysis (17 May 2026). A methodological critique received on 17 May 2026 from V. Chelnokov one of the authors of arXiv: 2207. 08797, the lattice dataset analysed in this Letter, has identified two analysis errors: Coordinate misidentification. The published ancillary tables of arXiv: 2207. 08797 report curl (E) values at coordinates (xₗ, xₜ) — longitudinal and transverse displacements along/perpendicular to the quark-antiquark axis. This Letter mistakenly treated them as Cartesian coordinates in the transverse plane of the flux tube. The azimuthal Fourier decomposition reported in Analysis I therefore measures structure in the (xₗ, xₜ) half-plane — which is geometrically asymmetric by construction — rather than C₃ structure around the tube axis. The n=3 excess reported in this Letter does not test the predicted helical signature. Statistical correlations and duplicate radial bins. The sign-test p-value of 4. 4 × 10⁻⁷ quoted in this Letter is invalid on two grounds: (a) lattice Monte Carlo data points are correlated (the underlying covariance matrices were not published), and (b) several "radial bins" in the v4b analysis correspond to duplicate radial distances at distinct angular positions, inflating the effective independent sample count from ~29 to 42. The significance claim is retracted. The EDCE structural prediction (n=3 azimuthal C₃ structure in the transverse cross-section of the QCD flux tube, arising from triangular cell tiling with 3: 2: 1 edge weights and 60° rotations between successive cells along the tube axis) is unchanged. It is a falsifiable prediction awaiting a dedicated lattice measurement: full transverse (y, z) cross-section at fixed xₗ, with covariance matrix output, in an SU (3) gauge ensemble. The longitudinal modulation analysis (Analysis II, using xₗ directly as a one-dimensional coordinate against Baker et al. (2024) Table 4) is not affected by the coordinate critique and the qualitative observations — sinusoidal modulation with λ ≈ 0. 93 fm, modulation depth B/A ≈ 0. 49, anti-correlation r = −0. 937 between v_φ and gH₀ — remain descriptive but cannot be assigned formal significance in the absence of error covariance. A revised prediction-only Letter, with quantitative C₃ amplitude and radial profile from the EDCE cell model, will be posted as a subsequent version under this DOI chain. Concept DOI: 10. 5281/zenodo. 19258788 — version chain preserved. Cite the concept DOI rather than this version-specific DOI in any future reference.
William Butler (Fri,) studied this question.