Emulation Hierarchies, Capacity-Separated Detection, and Epistemic Defense in Contracting Recursive Systems

This article extends the Integration Capacity / Velocity Mismatch Criterion (VMC) framework for Lipschitz contracting recursive systems by developing a geometric theory of emulation, detectability, and epistemic limits. Three primary results are established. First, the query surface 𝐵𝐻⊂∂Ω𝜏 is characterized as the set of boundary fixed points achievable under capacity-saturating forcing. In the isotropic linear case 𝐴=𝜆𝐼, this surface coincides with the full coherence boundary; for generic linear systems in dimension 𝑛≥3, it forms a smooth hypersurface of positive measure. Second, δ-emulation is defined via conjugacy error induced by projection onto proper subspaces. It is shown that exact emulation from a proper non–A-invariant subspace is impossible and that coherence-admissible emulation hierarchies have bounded depth determined by integration capacity and cumulative deficit. Third, a capacity-separated detection theorem is proved: δ-emulations that are indistinguishable at a fixed observation level necessarily induce Velocity Mismatch Criterion violations in any subsystem with integration capacity Γ𝐿