The Vacuum Group Set - From Empty Space to The Coherence Vacuum
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The concept of vacuum occupies a central yet unstable place in the history of physics. Across classical mechanics, relativity, quantum theory, quantum field theory, cosmology, particle physics, and ontology, the vacuum set includes radically different conditions: empty space, absence of matter, lowest-energy field state, symmetry-bearing ground state, metastable energetic regime, the cosmological background and the vacuum of coherence invariance. This paper argues that these are not merely technical variations of one idea, but distinct vacuum concepts belonging to different levels of ontological depth. Existing vacuum models, however sophisticated, remain defined within alreadyconstituted structures such as spacetime, field ontology, energetic ordering, or symmetryframeworks. They therefore do not reach the deepest generative condition from which suchstructures emerge. In response, this paper develops a comparative ontology of vacuum and introduces the concept of the coherence vacuum: the pre-relational, pre-dimensional, fully coherent generative substrate from which dimensionality, curvature, fields, mass, force, and derived vacuum states emerge through structured reduction. Within this framework, the quantum vacuum isreinterpreted not as ultimate foundation, but as a reduced or exhausted-potential vacuuminternal to an already structured regime. The paper presents a hierarchy of vacuum concepts, distinguishes absence-based, geometric, energetic, differentiating, and generative vacua, and argues that the coherence vacuum provides the deepest category in this hierarchy. Vacuum isthereby redefined from emptiness or baseline energy into the ontological source condition. Keywords Vacuum ontology; coherence vacuum; quantum vacuum; field vacuum; Higgs vacuum; false vacuum; cosmological vacuum; emergence; ontology of physics; generative substrate
Author: Lilien, Philip
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7154172279
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