Weak-lensing and galaxy maps return fewer high peaks, or a shifted peak-height distribution, than ΛCDM models tuned to the CMB and cluster counts predict (Bardeen 1986; Peacock and Dodds 1996; Hoekstra 2001). High peaks trace the steepest potential wells, so the deficit says the densest structures are not shaped the way CDM-particle halos require.
The model assumes mass concentrates by collisionless N-body relaxation around dark matter particles, making cuspy NFW profiles nearly inevitable, and cuspy concentrated halos produce sharp tall convergence peaks. A persistent high-peak deficit forces baryonic-feedback patches or projection arguments, because the profile shape itself is not negotiable while the particle is.
SCT has no dark matter particle to relax into a cusp. The effective potential is Φ_eff = Φ_local + Φ_mesh (P50): visible matter plus the constructive interference of comoving sources through the parent hierarchy. The mesh term is intrinsically coherent and slowly varying with radius, strongest in the outskirts where local gravity is weakest (P52), so the effective halo profile is smoother than NFW by construction, the interference pattern of a coherent field rather than the relaxation endpoint of collisionless particles. Smoother profiles produce fewer high convergence peaks at the same total mass, which is the observed deficit, while the virialized amplification still delivers A* = 5.970, the parameter-free 1/f_b fixed point derived in Paper 13, From Chaos to Coherent Gravity.
This is the same coherent-mesh reading that carries the A_lens = 1.18 CMB lensing excess and the S₈ sector: the mesh adds lensing power smoothly at large scales while removing the sharp small-scale spikes a particle cusp would produce. The superposition formalism is developed in Paper 6, From Chaos to Cosmic Collisions. One secondary modulation rides on top: peak orientations inherit the collision J axis through angular momentum inheritance (P31, P32), so the peak distribution should carry a faint directional alignment absent from any isotropic CDM prediction.
The keystone is P54: structure without dark matter particles. Remove it and the whole reading collapses; keep it and the peak deficit stops being missing physics and becomes the expected face of a coherent rather than particulate gravitational field.
Euclid, LSST, and Roman peak functions carry the kill: if percent-level peak counts converge on the cuspy-NFW ΛCDM prediction with no high-peak deficit, the smooth coherent-mesh profile is refuted. The secondary check: peak orientations confirmed isotropic at >3σ would remove the predicted J-axis alignment and cut the M3 modulation away from the mechanism.