On the Emergent Origin of Gravitation from Phase-Selective Realization

This work proposes a reformulation of gravitation as an emergent phenomenon arising from phase-selective realization rather than as a fundamental force or an intrinsic geometric property of spacetime. Starting from minimal and explicit assumptions, the framework introduces no additional dynamical fields, force laws, or phenomenological scales. A unique realization-locking correction to the background metric is derived, constrained to a rank-1 structure constructed solely from a scalar realization phase and its gradient. Gravitation is thereby interpreted as a trajectory-selection mechanism: only phase-coherent trajectories persist under recursive, temporally asymmetric realization. Observable gravitational phenomena correspond to the survival of admissible trajectories rather than to forces acting on matter. Standard gravitational phenomenology—including Newtonian dynamics, weak-field General Relativity, and gravitational lensing—is recovered as an effective description of the surviving trajectories. A consistency condition for lensing follows naturally from isotropization of the realization gradient, without invoking additional degrees of freedom. The work further establishes an empirical no-go result: no gravitational model in which gravitation acts as a purely local, mass-sourced force can simultaneously account for galaxy rotation curves and cosmological observations without contradiction. This exclusion follows directly from observational data and is independent of the theoretical construction presented. The framework is mathematically minimal, empirically viable, and falsifiable. It provides a consistent alternative to force-based interpretations of gravitation and identifies concrete observational regimes—particularly at galactic and late-time cosmological scales—where phase-selective realization can be tested.