Sub-Manifold Soliton Microphysics: The Hydrodynamic Vorton Structure of Photons and Neutrinos

Unlike closed, stable solitons such as electrons and protons, photons and neutrinos represent open sub-manifold structures within the discrete vacuum lattice. The photon is a propagating, transverse-helical vortex dipole packet. Because it does not form a closed loop, its internal line tension vanishes, conferring strictly zero rest mass while it self-advects at the speed of light with unit angular spin. The neutrino is an open, chiral nineteen-vorton filamentary bridge created during beta decay to absorb the topological linking deficit when a neutron converts into a proton. Its sub-electron-volt mass scale arises directly from boundary Casimir defects at its two open filament tips interacting with the host lattice, eliminating the need for an ad-hoc seesaw mechanism. Neutrino flavor oscillations reflect the lowest standing torsional harmonics vibrating along this nineteen-node open chain.