Phase-locked Nuclear Structure I: A Semiclassical Framework for Nuclear Stability, Clustering, and Decay

This paper presents a semiclassical framework in which nuclear structure, stability, and decay arise from phase locking of internal electromagnetic motion within nucleons. Protons and neutrons are treated as nucleons possessing a common internal electromagnetic mode capable of synchronizing with neighboring nucleons when aligned in parallel. This constraint forces nuclei to self-organize into linear clusters of two, three, and four nucleons, with the four-nucleon p-n-p-n chain forming the smallest fully saturated unit. The framework reproduces the binding systematics of A = 2-4 nuclei, explains the absence of stable A =5 systems, and accounts for alpha clustering, saturation, neutron excess, and characteristic fission fragment patterns. Heavy nuclei emerge as networks of saturated four-nucleon clusters connected by weaker neutron-mediated links. The same phase-locking mechanism previously shown to govern atomic orbital quantization thus governs nuclear architecture across the chart of nuclides, without introducing new fundamental forces. VC 2026 Physics Essays Publication. [http://dx.doi.org/10.4006/0836-1398-39.1.135]