A Framework for Structured Vacuum Resonance
The Zero-Point Coherence and Structured Vacuum Resonance paper presents a falsifiable experimental methodology for testing whether resonantly modulated quantum-vacuum boundary systems exhibit reproducible coherence structure beyond established classical and quantum-optical explanations.
Quantum field theory already predicts that the vacuum state is nontrivial and that measurable observables depend on geometry, material response, and boundary conditions. Static Casimir forces, modified spontaneous emission, squeezed states, and dynamical Casimir radiation are established examples of this broader physics. This paper does not reinterpret those known effects as evidence of a new field, does not claim net extraction of vacuum energy, and does not treat the vacuum as a classical medium. Instead, it asks a narrower question: after known electromagnetic, thermal, mechanical, detector, squeezing, parametric, and dynamical-Casimir contributions are modeled, does a preregistered structural-coherence statistic predict a reproducible residual?
The proposed diagnostic is the Zero-Point Coherence Index (ZPCI),
where the four bounded components represent independently measured entropy-like order, apparatus stability, geometry-conditioned mode structure, and spectral or quantum coherence. The geometric mean preserves the hypothesis that all four components must contribute simultaneously while preventing one large term from compensating arbitrarily for a near-zero component. ZPCI is treated as a statistical diagnostic rather than a fundamental physical field or energy density.
The principal experimental hypothesis is differential. A resonantly driven active system is compared with instrument-baseline, sham, detuned, classical-drive-matched, thermal-matched, and phase-scrambled control conditions. The primary observable may be quadrature noise, cross-mode covariance, first- or second-order coherence, photon flux, or interferometric residuals. Support requires a frozen ZPCI-based model to improve held-out prediction beyond both a classical apparatus model and a standard quantum-optical model containing known squeezing, parametric amplification, cavity-response effects, and dynamical Casimir processes.
A secondary Triune Harmonic Dynamics (THD) hypothesis tests preregistered harmonic relations, including selected mode families. These frequencies, bandwidths, phase relations, and multiplicity corrections must be fixed before confirmatory analysis and compared against frequency-matched and phase-scrambled surrogate controls.
The manuscript includes explicit energy-accounting boundaries. Dynamical Casimir photons generated under time-dependent boundary modulation do not constitute evidence of free energy because the external drive supplies work. Any future energetic claim would require a separate closed-cycle calorimetric study with full accounting of applied work, stored energy, thermal exchange, losses, and uncertainty.
A protocol-level reproducibility package accompanies the manuscript. It contains machine-readable preregistration fields, executable ZPCI calculations, synthetic software-verification data, model-comparison scaffolding, harmonic-surrogate testing, unit tests, empirical run templates, results templates, citation metadata, and SHA-256 integrity checksums.
The present work is therefore a theoretical and experimental preregistration framework. It is designed to make structured vacuum coherence scientifically vulnerable: if the residual disappears under stronger conventional models or matched controls, the hypothesis is rejected or restricted; if it survives replication, the result would justify deeper microscopic investigation.