The Phi_MDL Field: From Discrete Certificate to Continuum Physics

From a single polynomial — p(L,C,R) = C + R - CR - LCR mod 7 — that updates a row of cells in seven possible states, the masses of all elementary particles, the structure of spacetime, and the gauge couplings of the Standard Model can be derived. The bridge between the discrete arithmetic substrate and continuum physics is the Phi_MDL scalar field: a smooth field whose vacuum expectation value is fixed by the SRRG (Self-Referential Recursion Group) fixed point of the master quadratic. This tutorial explains how the Phi_MDL field is constructed from the GTE certificate, how its dynamics are derived from the MDL-Lovelock principle, and how its vacuum structure produces the electroweak scale and Higgs mass without free parameters.