MID/QC Foundation Series 5 — A Substrate Interpretation of Confinement and the Gluon Mass Gap

This paper presents a substrate‑native interpretation of confinement and the gluon mass gap within the MID/QC framework. Confinement emerges as a curvature‑driven tension amplification process in filament geometry, producing a natural mass gap without requiring explicit mass terms. The analysis develops the substrate primitives—curvature, torsion, coherence, and tension—and shows how QCD behavior arises from their interaction. This work is part of the MID/QC Foundation Series, which establishes the geometric substrate mechanisms underlying mass, charge, binding, and symmetry structure across physical scales.