Structural Confinement and Selective Coupling: A Consilience Note on Inferring Structure from Shaped Absences

Many physical structures are not directly observable but must be inferred through constrained interaction with probe fields. This note presents color centers in irradiated ionic crystals as a canonical example of structure-first inference: geometric confinement enforces discrete standing modes, producing selective absorption rather than direct emission. Building on the wavelength–momentum correspondence formalized by Louis de Broglie (1924), the observable signature is shown to be a spectral deficit imposed by structure, not a property of the trapped degree of freedom itself. The analysis motivates a general inference principle applicable across domains: when standing constraints govern admissible dynamics, structure manifests indirectly through shaped absences, selective coupling, or variance suppression in downstream observables.