Ontological Framework of Imbricated Degrees (OFID): Minimal Ontology of Physical Reality and Informational Accessibility

This work introduces OFID, a minimal ontological framework proposing that physical reality may include structurally inaccessible degrees of freedom beyond locally observable descriptions. It presents the Ontological Framework of Imbricated Degrees (OFID), a minimal ontological structure intended to clarify the relationship between global physical states and locally accessible descriptions within contemporary physics. The framework is derived from structural constraints already present in established physics, including quantum decoherence, entanglement, and gravitational horizons. These phenomena jointly indicate a dissociation between global ontological states and effective local descriptions. OFID introduces no modification to the formalism of quantum mechanics or general relativity and proposes no additional dynamical mechanisms. Instead, it provides a minimal ontological clarification of the informational accessibility structure implicit in these theories. The framework is explicitly exposed to empirical falsification through the OFID-G conjecture, which proposes the possible existence of an irreducible gravitational contribution to decoherence affecting mesoscopic quantum superpositions. This work aims to provide a coherent conceptual structure linking phenomena often treated separately in modern physics, including quantum superposition, measurement, decoherence, entanglement, and gravitational horizons. Project page (experimental framework, OFID-G, and OFID): https://alexsasfrance.github.io/OFID-framework/