Resolution of the Neutron Lifetime Puzzle via Boundary-Induced Substrate Stress: Resolving the Beam-Bottle Anomaly Without Dark Decay Channels or Sterile Sectors

The persistent discrepancy between the “bottle” (τbottle = 877.75 ± 0.28 s) and “beam” (τbeam = 887.7 ± 1.2 s) determinations of the free neutron lifetime represents a persis- tent > 4σ tension in precision fundamental physics. While the Standard Model strictly requires an invariant decay rate governed by the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa ma- trix element Vud and the axial-vector coupling gA, current speculative attempts to re- solve the anomaly invoke unobserved dark-sector decay branches (n → χ + γ or n → dark matter) that fail to withstand direct empirical searches. Building upon our foun- dational series on the physical vacuum as an elastically pre-stressed continuum (Novák, DOIs: 10.5281/zenodo.23672875, 10.5281/zenodo.23703698, 10.5281/zenodo.24090620), we demonstrate that this 10-second discrepancy is an environmental manifestation of boundary-induced substrate strain. In our framework, the neutron is not an isolated point particle in absolute void, but a localized topological strain-vortex soliton whose phase relaxation (beta decay) is intrinsically coupled to the local hydrostatic pre-stress Peff = P0 + δP and shear impedance Z(ω) of the vacuum. In ultra-cold neutron (UCN) trap experiments (bottle method), boundary proximity, mechanical surface potentials, and high magnetic trap gradients compress the local substrate, elevating δP and ac- celerating soliton phase unwinding (∆τ ≈ −10 s). In in-flight beam experiments, neu- trons traverse an unconfined, quiescent substrate with negligible external boundary strain (δP → 0), measuring the true asymptotic ground-state lifetime. We derive the analytical dependence of τn on the external stress tensor, eliminating the need for hy- pothetical mirror matter or dark decays under Occam’s razor.