php7 / php 5.6 upgrade error on laravel

I have a laravel 5.2 application working perfectly fine on php 5.5.9 on apache server linux ubuntu 14.04. I upgarded and tried php 5.6.3. I am able to view the index page but when I login, im getting an internal server error on login request. I upgraded to php7.0 and now in the login page when I try to login, the server generates an infinite loop of requests. Do I have a problem with my .htaccess file or compability issues? Here is my apache config

<VirtualHost *:80>


    ServerName dev20.ariessystem.us
    ServerAlias *.dev20.ariessystem.us

    DocumentRoot /home/App2.0/public


    <Directory "/home/App2.0/public">

    DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
    Options -Indexes
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    RewriteEngine On
    </Directory>
    # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
    # error, crit, alert, emerg.
    # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
    # modules, e.g.
    #LogLevel info ssl:warn

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

    # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
    # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
    # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
    # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
    # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
    #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf

Here is my htaccess file in laravel.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
<IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
    Options -MultiViews
</IfModule>

RewriteEngine On

# Redirect Trailing Slashes If Not A Folder...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]

# Handle Front Controller...
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

# Handle Authorization Header
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} .
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

via Chebli Mohamed