Emergent Matter, Condensation, and Continuous Regeneration: A Substrate-Field Formulation of the Higgs Mechanism, Topological Solitons, and Gauge Forces

We present a substrate field formulation of particle physics where elementary matter and gauge interactions emerge from the non-linear elastic mechanics of the spacetime vacuum. Starting from a stable bare potential, substrate reaction at the mesoscopic scale σ_cut ≈ 100 nm dynamically generates the effective Mexican-hat potential and the Higgs vacuum expectation value v_sub ≈ 246 GeV. Gauge boson masses arise from condensed elastic phase viscosity during motion. Elementary fermions are realized as stable topological phase vortices (solitons) stabilized by integer winding numbers, propagating via continuous regeneration. Strong interaction confinement and prompt pair production are derived as mechanical vacuum tearing when elastic flux tension crosses the fundamental action bound ħ/2.