From Vacuum Fluctuation to Topological Roughness: A Historical and Ontological Reconstruction of Particle Creation

Abstract

Contemporary quantum field theory explains particle creation through six distinct mechanisms—high‑energy collisions, the Schwinger effect, Breit–Wheeler pair production, the dynamical Casimir effect, the Unruh effect, and Hawking radiation—each anchored to a distinct mathematical construction of the vacuum. Through historical reconstruction, this paper demonstrates that these six "vacuums" are not different approximations of a single entity, but symptoms of a conceptual fissure in twentieth‑century physics. The ontologies of the old framework—substantivalism, ontic structural realism, and process philosophy—each fail to explain creation ex nihilo because they presuppose "the vacuum" as a substratum. The seemingly natural formula "borrowing energy from the vacuum" is an ontological tautology: it uses a presupposition to explain itself. This paper introduces ZQCM (Zero‑Parameter Quantum Cartan Mechanics) not as a competitor to the Standard Model, but as a mathematical probe for ontological assessment. Grounded in three axioms—S³ spectral geometry, Cl(9) spinor algebra, and roughness quantization—ZQCM reformulates particle creation as the steady‑state grammatical inflection of Energein (perpetual perturbation) on a compact orbit. All six mechanisms are subsumed under a single grammar of topological roughness, without positing any "vacuum" entity. On this basis, we propose Structured Process Ontology (SPO), which unifies and extends contemporary radical ontologies. Assessment follows Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programmes rather than naive Popperian falsificationism.