Reactive Vacuum: Information Genesis through Fluctuation–Capacity Coupling in Vacuum Folding Dynamics

Vacuum Folding Dynamics (VFD) derives the gravitational constant G, the cosmological constant Λ, the folding temperature T, and spacetime dimensionality D from a single scalar field σf (x), the vacuum folding density. However, the origin of σf itself has remained an open question: the preceding papers presuppose its existence without deriving it from more primitive ingredients. We propose that σf is a reaction product of two pre-existing and independently motivated quantities: geometric capacity Cgeo, the maximum information that a region of spacetime can hold (set by the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy bound), and vacuum fluctuation density Fᵥac, the irreducible quantum noise of the vacuum (verified experimentally through the Casimir effect and the Lamb shift). Neither alone creates information content: capacity without fluctuation is an empty lattice; fluctuation without capacity is structureless noise. Their coupling σf = Cgeo · Fᵥac produces the information density that drives the entire VFD cascade. This resolves the bootstrap problem of the self-encoding loop identified in the companion paper, and extends the coupling chain to Fᵥac × Cgeo → σf → G, Λ, T, D. We discuss falsifiable predictions arising from the fluctuation–capacity decomposition and draw a structural analogy to reactive file architectures, where information arises only through the interaction of mutable signals with a structured substrate.