Photon Emission as Symmetry Rejection: The Incompatible Residue of the Hydrogen Bond

We propose that photon emission arises from symmetry incompatibility between the electron and proton in the hydrogen atom. The electron resides on an icosahedral face with 3-fold symmetry, while the proton sits at a vertex with 5-fold symmetry. Since gcd(3, 5) = 1, these symmetries are coprime—they share no common resonance. The electron's third-order contribution to the binding energy, with coefficient c₃ = 1/11 = χ/(F + χ), cannot be accommodated by the proton's 5-fold structure. This incompatible component must radiate away as a photon. The photon thus carries the rejected 3-fold structure: 3 = 2 + 1, yielding two transverse polarizations plus one propagation direction. The observed exponential decay of photon waveforms provides experimental confirmation: discrete lattice modes produce complete rejection (not gradual leakage), yielding clean exponential emission profiles. This explains why photons have exactly two polarization states—they are the geometric residue that the proton cannot hold.