Adaptive Dark Matter: When Geometry Sets the Mass

Galaxies often rotate faster than their visible matter predicts, and gravitational lensing can reveal more gravitational influence than stars and gas supply within General Relativity. The usual interpretation attributes this discrepancy to unseen mass, called dark matter. The cosmic microwave background constrains the early gravitational source, while cluster collisions can separate lensing concentrations from the hot gas. An explanation must account for the extra attraction, its distribution and history, and its response when structures interact. The Conformal Emergent Reality Model (CERM) offers a geometric modification whose behaviour changes with environment and scale. Its Omega field gives physical scale to a conformal geometry; we investigate its proposed quantum excitation, the Omegon, as a geometric dark-matter candidate. Curvature sets the leading mass, while the occupied field contributes to curvature in return. This feedback is self-limiting: sixteen times the population-energy input produces roughly twice the mass in the strong-feedback limit, at fixed environment and structure. Mass, speed and system size can then place the same excitation in wave-sensitive or nearly classical regimes. We calculate how this feedback changes the excitation's wavelength, its response to a passing disturbance, and the metric traced by matter and light. For weak isotropic forcing of a Gaussian population, absorbed power falls as inverse speed at high velocity because an angular band of nearly transverse patterns remains slowly swept. In the static weak-field limit, an outward-decreasing occupied amplitude predicts a larger spherical lensing mass than dynamical mass when its gradient dominates the directional-stress correction; a projected example carries this signed difference into shear and convergence. One coupling, applied to 121 galaxies and 13 clusters under a common illustrative calibration, places 120 of 121 galaxies in a wave-sensitive regime and all 13 clusters at small recoil. These linked results define a geometric baseline for testing what CERM explains and where additional contributions may be needed. A coupled halo state and metric must next turn these local relations into joint predictions for motion, response and light. Status of this version: Preprint v1.0. The mathematical derivations and technical appendices are complete; the prose is undergoing final editorial revision. Revised versions will be posted to this record as new versions. Keywords: geometric dark matter; Omegon; Conformal Emergent Reality Model; curvature-dependent mass; environmental feedback; galaxy halos; quantum response; gravitational lensing; structure formation.