The Cosmological Constant as a Category Error: Vacuum Energy, Finite Domains, and the Gravitational Residual

This manuscript is currently under review at Foundations of Physics. This paper is part of a research program proposing that the cosmological constant arises not from total vacuum energy but from the finite-domain residual to which gravity actually couples. This paper develops the second component of a research program examining the consequences of finite-domain vacuum energy for the cosmological constant problem. The cosmological constant problem—the approximately 10¹²⁰ discrepancy between quantum field theoretic estimates of vacuum energy density and cosmological observation—is widely regarded as one of the deepest unsolved problems in theoretical physics. This paper argues that the discrepancy arises not…