Phase Orthogonality of Charge and the Absence of Electromagnetic Interaction: Toward a Minimal Interpretation of Dark Matter

Dark matter is inferred to constitute a dominant fraction of the cosmic mass–energy budget, yet remains undetected due to its apparent lack of electromagnetic interaction. This paper proposes a minimal hypothesis in which such invisibility arises not from new particles or hidden forces, but from a reinterpretation of the phase structure of electric charge. We suggest that if electric charge resides in a complex phase space and is oriented orthogonally to the real axis, electromagnetic interaction terms are structurally nullified. In this configuration, matter remains gravitationally active while being electromagnetically inert. We argue that the accumulation of such phase-orthogonal charge states on cosmological scales can qualitatively reproduce observed dark matter phenomena, including flat galactic rotation curves and gravitational lensing. This framework reframes the dark sector not as missing matter, but as a problem of interaction alignment. Version 2.0: Revised Section 7 for alignment with the 3-part series and minor structural updates.