Two Modes of Pattern Dissolution in Vector Meson Decays: A Compactness-Dependent Permeability Ceiling for Vacuum-Mediated Transitions

Vector meson decays fall into two distinct classes with sharply different behaviour. In vacuum-mediated decays where the quark-antiquark pair must annihilate or transition through the QCD vacuum, the dimensionless width-to-mass ratio $\eta=\Gamma/m$ obeys a compactness-dependent upper bound: no ground-state vector meson in the expanded dataset exceeds a ceiling scaling as $\eta\propto m^{-\beta}$ with $\beta=3.6$, anchored to the $\rho(770)$. Individual states sit at or below this ceiling by amounts explained by known quantum-number constraints (G-parity, the OZI rule, below-threshold effects). In fall-apart decays where the meson sits above the open-flavor threshold and the quarks simply separate, the ceiling is violated by orders of magnitude. This clean separation provides evidence that the ceiling measures a property of the vacuum as a medium, operative only when the decay process must engage that medium. We offer a candidate geometric explanation for the ceiling's slope, deriving from Compton wavelength scaling in icosahedral quasicrystal spectral geometry, but emphasise that the empirical ceiling and the geometric interpretation have different evidentiary status: the former is a pattern in the data; the latter is a hypothesis about its origin. Correspondence: niedzkatie@gmail.com