Decay as Saturation

In conventional physics, decay is treated as a probabilistic event: an unstable particle has a chance to disintegrate, described by a half-life or decay width. The Standard Model attributes this to coupling between fields and violations of symmetry.

In modal dynamics, decay is not probabilistic, not stochastic, and not field-driven. It is the natural outcome of coherence saturation—when a mode can no longer maintain its internal structure within a shifting anchoring landscape.

Coherence Limits

A mode is sustained only so long as:

• Its internal phase structure remains intact, and
• It can anchor into the surrounding coherence field without exceeding cost limits

But coherence is not infinite. Each region of space can support only so much modal structure before anchoring capacity is exhausted. This occurs through:

• Overlap with other modes
• Internal instability (phase tension)
• Environmental changes in the coherence field $B(x)$

When this threshold is crossed, the mode’s internal cost rises sharply, and anchoring fails.

Structural Collapse

The failure of a mode is not a sharp “event.” It is a structural breakdown:

• Phase alignment begins to degrade
• The coherence envelope loses shape
• The mode fragments into lower-cost coherence packets

This process is what we observe as decay.

The products of decay are not chosen randomly. They are the only modes that can stably re-anchor in the available coherence landscape.

Thus:

• Decay paths are determined by local structure
• Conservation arises from coherence continuity (e.g. winding, spin, anchoring symmetry)
• Nothing “decides” to decay—it becomes inevitable when anchoring tension exceeds the survival limit

Why It Appears Probabilistic

From a distance, decay appears random. But this is an illusion caused by:

• Small, unmeasurable changes in local coherence structure
• Nonlinearity in the anchoring cost functional
• Rapid divergence in high-cost regions

Probability in decay reflects our ignorance of structural thresholds, not a fundamental randomness.

(See Appendix AH — Composite Modes and Appendix AI — Anchoring Instability.)

Decay is not collapse.
It is structural reorganisation under stress—governed by the same rules that sustain coherence.