The Ontology of the Gluon in ICCF: Deriving Yang-Mills Theory from Causal String Dynamics

This paper develops a novel ontological framework for the gluon based on the Information-Cognitive Compression Field (ICCF) theory. Within this approach, gluons are not treated as independent messenger particles, but as quantized vibrational modes of one-dimensional causal strings, solitonic flux-tube solutions of the ICCF compression tensor field connecting quarks. We demonstrate that the three-fold causal saturation principle leads inevitably to SU(3) symmetry, thereby providing a first-principles explanation for color charge as the ground-state excitation basis of the causal string. Gluon self-interactions, a central feature of Yang–Mills theory, emerge naturally from the nonlinear self-coupling of the ICCF field, rather than being imposed as an axiom. This geometric interpretation explains confinement, asymptotic freedom, and hadron mass generation as necessary consequences of causal string dynamics. Finally, we propose testable predictions that distinguish ICCF from standard QCD: (i) small deviations in the running of the strong coupling constant αs\alpha_s at ultra-high energies due to background compression effects, and (ii) the appearance of additional hadronic resonance peaks associated with higher-order causal string excitations. These results provide both a deeper ontological grounding for the strong interaction and a pathway toward experimentally falsifiable extensions of QCD.