Abstract

In conventional particle physics, lifetimes are treated as interaction-dependent and class-specific quantities. In earlier work, we showed that this separation is not required for charged leptons: treating elementary particles as discrete structures composed of identical building blocks identifies the electron as a minimal stable configuration, with the muon and tau emerging as its first resonant extensions, whose masses follow directly from structural resonance constraints. In the present work, this structural perspective is extended to unstable particles across different classes. If metastable particles correspond to finite discrete resonators, then lifetime is determined by coherence and resonance stability rather than by particle class. Restricting the analysis to configurations capable of sustaining internal oscillations, we find that particle lifetimes follow a common mass–lifetime scaling and organize into distinct clusters instead of forming a continuous distribution. These features are characteristic of finite discrete resonance systems. The observed clustering and the termination of the sequence at three groups follow naturally from a finite resonance window, beyond which lifetimes fall below the minimum time required to establish coherent oscillations. Lifetime thus emerges as a structural property of discrete coherent matter rather than as an independent dynamical parameter.