Beyond the Bowfront: Quantized Phase-Coherence, Macro-Helicity Transport, and New Horizons for Interstellar Navigation

Beyond the Bowfront: Quantized Phase-Coherence,Macro-Helicity Transport, and New Horizons forInterstellar NavigationInterstellar travel is constrained not only by propulsion energy but by the interaction between a spacecraft and the interstellar medium (ISM). Above velocities of ∼ 220kms−1, thebowfront—a shock boundary formed by ram-flow compression—transitions into a strongly nonlinear regime, producing destructive heating, ionization, and coherence loss. This paper extendsthe Vening (2026) phase-coherence framework by introducing a quantized macro-helicity modelfor bowfront formation, interpreting the shock as a phase-frustration surface where emissionimprinted helical phase decouples from the background ordering field Θ(x). We derive thephase-slippage criterion, recover the empirical velocity threshold, and propose new propulsionstrategies based on phase-matched macro-helicity transport. Ten new use-cases, ten predictions, and ten conceptual insights are presented, outlining a research roadmap for interstellarnavigation, plasma physics, and ultralight dark-matter detection