The Empathon: a massive abelian mediator coupled to integrated information — ultraviolet completions, microcausality, and axiomatic consistency

This preprint gives a self-contained field-theoretic treatment of the Empathon: a massive abelian vector boson coupled selectively to sources of integrated information. The paper has two parts. The first part compares two ultraviolet completions of the same low-energy Proca theory: a top-down N=2 supergravity completion, in which the mediator is identified with a graviphoton, and a bottom-up Stueckelberg U(1) extension, in which the mediator mass is a free phenomenological parameter. The two completions are equivalent in their low-energy bosonic sector, but differ in kinetic mixing, supersymmetric partners, mass generation, charge structure and observable discriminators. The second part addresses axiomatic consistency. Under stated perturbative assumptions, the paper formulates the MC-E criterion: for a conserved source current and perturbative coupling, empathonic current commutators vanish at spacelike separation to all finite orders in perturbation theory. Long-range empathic correlations are therefore treated as state properties of a non-free KMS vacuum, not as violations of the commutator structure. The non-perturbative regime and the topological channel remain open. The paper also translates the framework into a Haag–Kastler net of local observables and lists falsifiable discriminators including dark-photon searches, ΔNeff constraints and fifth-force tests.