Glossary
Core
terms.
A short list. PDT introduces few new words and uses each one consistently across the series.
Coherence
The degree to which neighbouring phases stay locked together. High coherence behaves like classical matter or smooth spacetime. Low coherence behaves like vacuum.
Coherence Length
The characteristic distance over which phases stay locked. Sets the size of stable rosettes, the reach of forces, and the scale at which classical behaviour begins.
Decoherence Envelope
The boundary outside which two phase regions can no longer interfere. PDT gives an explicit equation for this envelope, which is what makes measurement collapse calculable rather than postulated.
Drift Tensor
The object that encodes how phase drift varies across spacetime. It plays the role that the metric and connection play in general relativity and is recovered as their source.
Falsifiable Prediction
A specific, numerical outcome that, if not observed, would refute a named paper. Every PDT paper carries at least one. The site tracks them on the Framework Status page.
Interference
The constructive or destructive overlap of phase across two regions. PDT treats interference as the fundamental dynamical event; particles and fields are interference patterns at scale.
Measurement
The locking of phase between observer and system inside a shared coherence envelope. Outcomes, probabilities and apparent collapse all follow from this geometry.
Observer
In PDT, an observer is any region of high coherence that exchanges phase with the system being observed. There is no special status for consciousness or for laboratory apparatus.
Phase
The basic degree of freedom in PDT. Not the phase of a wave in some pre-existing space, but the underlying quantity from which space, matter and time are reconstructed.
Phase Drift
The rate at which phase changes across a region. In PDT, drift gradients carry the role usually assigned to forces. Where standard physics sees a field, PDT sees a drift.
Phase Field
The continuous distribution of phase across a region. The site's landing-page animation is a direct visualisation of a small phase field evolving under the PDT dynamics.
Primitive
The irreducible unit of the theory. In PDT the primitive is the phase rosette. Everything larger is a configuration of primitives; nothing smaller is meaningful.
PTG
Phase-Theoretic Gravity. The series of papers that derives gravitation, including general relativity in the appropriate limit, from phase drift dynamics.
QM Reformulation
The companion series that rebuilds quantum mechanics on the same phase primitive. Standard QM is recovered in the high-coherence limit; departures are predicted and listed.
Resonance
A self-reinforcing pattern of phase drift. Resonances are how PDT explains particle masses, atomic spectra and the discrete structure of matter without quantising by hand.
Rosette
A localised, six-armed phase pattern. The rosette is the smallest stable object in PDT and the building block from which particles are reconstructed.
Six-Fold Symmetry
The hexagonal symmetry of the stable phase primitive. Derived in PTG IV as the unique fixed point of the drift dynamics, not chosen by hand.
Stage
The PDT term for what is usually called spacetime. The stage is not background; it is reconstructed from the same phase primitive as everything on it.