Symmetric Failure Residue: Dynamically Sourced Dark Matter from Survival Constraint Failure

This work introduces Symmetric Failure Residue (SFR), a phenomenological framework in which dark matter arises as a dynamical gravitational residue rather than a primordial particle sector. The model treats the dark sector as emergent from a single organizing principle, a survival constraint governing whether spacetime realizations successfully stabilize a propagating particle sector.

In this unified framework, dark energy is described by History-Dependent Backreaction Expansion (HBE), an emergent geometric response to accumulated cosmic history, while dark matter is identified with SFR: a persistent, pressureless, collisionless gravitational imprint associated with realizations that fail to stabilize matter. General Relativity is left unmodified; all effects enter through standard stress–energy contributions.

SFR is permitted to exist at all epochs, but its early gravitational influence may be vanishingly small and effectively undetectable when total mass and structure are limited. As the universe matures and nonlinear structure formation proceeds, the same SFR becomes dynamically relevant and observationally measurable. This behavior is modeled through a structure-tied production kernel, where baryonic matter acts as a tracer of structure maturation and gravitational localization rather than as a generator of SFR.

The framework is evaluated as a hard null-test at the background level using Type Ia supernova and baryon acoustic oscillation data, achieving a statistically competitive fit while naturally addressing the cosmic coincidence problem. It predicts a distinctive high-redshift growth-delay behavior as an extreme negligible-influence limit, providing a clear and falsifiable target for forthcoming observations from JWST and 21-cm cosmology.

This preprint presents a self-contained theoretical formulation intended for dissemination and community evaluation prior to journal submission.