Operational Cloaking and Protocol Dependence of Dark-Sector Observables

Arc III — Matter Paper 5 Title Operational Cloaking and Protocol Dependence of Dark-Sector Observables Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.18225876 This paper develops a fully operational account of dark-sector phenomena by interpreting them as consequences of accessibility cloaking rather than as evidence for new ontological substances. Building on the framework of information-volume collapse, the work shows how internal degrees of freedom can become systematically inaccessible to entire classes of probes, rendering them effectively “dark” despite remaining dynamically coupled. Operational cloaking is defined as the suppression of observable correlations between a system and an external probe due to accessibility constraints imposed by internal structure, interaction bandwidth, or protocol choice. The paper demonstrates that such cloaking is generically protocol dependent: different experimental architectures can reveal or conceal the same underlying degrees of freedom without contradiction. Within this framework, dark matter–like behavior arises when gravitational probes remain sensitive to accessibility-induced mass effects while non-gravitational probes fail to access the underlying information channels. No new particle species, exotic interactions, or violations of known dynamics are required. This operational perspective reframes dark sectors as epistemic rather than ontological and places strong constraints on what counts as a meaningful dark-sector observable. The paper concludes the Matter Arc by showing how mass, cloaking, and protocol dependence fit within a single accessibility-based description. Keywords Operational cloaking; dark sector; protocol dependence; finite accessibility; information-volume collapse; emergent mass; foundations of gravity; inference limits Notes (Optional / Internal) Arc III — Matter (concluding paper) Completes mass → collapse → cloaking narrative Bridges to Arc IV (intersubjective structure)