Environment-Dependent Structure Suppression in Cosmic Shear: A Coherence-Based Interpretation of Neutrino–Dark Matter Coupling Claims

Recent analyses of cosmic shear data report a tentative (~3σ) preference for non-zero neutrino–dark matter coupling, introduced to suppress late-time structure growth and alleviate the S8 tension relative to ΛCDM. This note presents a conservative alternative interpretation: that the inferred coupling acts as an effective proxy for state-dependent suppression of collective coherence organization, rather than evidence for particle-level scattering. A clean observational discriminator is identified based on environment dependence. Particle-interaction models predict a universal coupling, while coherence-based interpretations predict systematic variation with dynamical state. The proposed test requires no new data and only minimal reanalysis of existing weak-lensing pipelines. The work is intentionally limited in scope and framed to be falsifiable using current and forthcoming cosmic shear surveys.