Laravel 8.52 application unable to load application(page not found) without appending index.php/ infront of the url - laravel

Question

I am running on Laravel 8.52 application. Web is hosted by Apache 2.4.41. the folder directory of my web root is /var/www/new.com/html
drwxrwxr-x 8 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 assets
drwxrwxr-x 12 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 7 15:39 core
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 1739 Feb 2 19:25 index.php
core is the folder that housed my laravel application. index.php is the laravel index file.
/var/www/new.com/html/core$ ls -la
total 960
drwxrwxr-x 12 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 7 15:39 .
drwxrwxr-x 6 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 7 20:08 ..
drwxrwxr-x 10 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 app
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 1686 Feb 2 19:24 artisan
drwxrwxr-x 3 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 bootstrap
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 2335 Feb 2 19:24 composer.json
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 355511 Feb 2 19:24 composer.lock
drwxrwxr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 config
drwxrwxr-x 5 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 database
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 220 Feb 2 19:45 .editorconfig
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 977 Feb 6 23:51 .env
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 111 Feb 2 19:24 .gitattributes
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 191 Feb 2 19:24 .gitignore
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 707 Feb 7 00:07 .htaccess
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 730 Feb 2 19:24 package.json
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 521192 Feb 2 19:24 package-lock.json
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 1202 Feb 2 19:24 phpunit.xml
drwxrwxr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 6 23:12 public
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 3780 Feb 2 19:24 README.md
drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 resources
drwxrwxr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 routes
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 563 Feb 7 15:39 server.php
drwxrwxr-x 6 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 storage
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 181 Feb 2 19:24 .styleci.yml
drwxrwxr-x 4 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:24 tests
drwxrwxr-x 49 www-data www-data 4096 Feb 2 19:25 vendor
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 549 Feb 2 19:24 webpack.mix.js
my apache virtual host config is
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost _default_:443>
ServerAdmin webmaster#new.com
ServerName new.com
ServerAlias www.new.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/new.com/html
DirectoryIndex index.php
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/www.new.com.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/www.new.com.key
<Directory "/var/www/new.com/html">
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
<FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</FilesMatch>
<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>
and i dont use .htaccess on the web root folder.
the problem is, I can load the domain successfully. e.g https://www.new.com
but there is a laravel app called admin can't loaded through https://www.new.com/admin
it returned page not found, The requested URL was not found on this server.
However, it can loaded successfully, if I enter https://www.new.com/index.php/admin
so how do I go about fixing it, without additionally enter the /index.php/
Thanks.
Cheers.
I have tried configuring .htaccess at the web root folder, but none of the parameters that i tested work.
I have tried remove the virtual host config and use /var/www/html as the web root folder instead.
I have tried just the port 80 only.
Not of the above the method works. It should be clear that the problem could be lie with laravel and not apache2.
here is my index.php at the webroot.
<?php
use Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
define('LARAVEL_START', microtime(true));
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Check If Application Is Under Maintenance
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| If the application is maintenance / demo mode via the "down" command we
| will require this file so that any prerendered template can be shown
| instead of starting the framework, which could cause an exception.
|
*/
if (file_exists(__DIR__.'/core/storage/framework/maintenance.php')) {
require __DIR__.'/core/storage/framework/maintenance.php';
}
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Register The Auto Loader
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Composer provides a convenient, automatically generated class loader for
| this application. We just need to utilize it! We'll simply require it
| into the script here so we don't need to manually load our classes.
|
*/
require __DIR__.'/core/vendor/autoload.php';
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Run The Application
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Once we have the application, we can handle the incoming request using
| the application's HTTP kernel. Then, we will send the response back
| to this client's browser, allowing them to enjoy our application.
|
*/
$app = require_once __DIR__.'/core/bootstrap/app.php';
$kernel = $app->make(Kernel::class);
$response = tap($kernel->handle(