Scalar fields, energy conditions and traversable wormholes
By C. Barceló, Matt Visser. 2000
168 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We describe the different possibilities that a simple and apparently quite harmless classical scalar field theory provides to violate the energy conditions. We demonstrate that a non-minimally coupled scalar field with a positive curvature coupling ξ>0 can easily violate all the standard energy conditions, up to and including the averaged null energy condition (ANEC). Indeed, this violation of the ANEC suggests the possible existence of traversable wormholes supported by non-minimally coupled scalars. To investigate this possibility we derive the classical solutions for gravity plus a general (arbitrary ξ) massless non-minimally coupled scalar field, restricting attention to the static and spherically symmetric configurations. Among these classical solutions we find an entire branch of traversable wormholes for every ξ>0. (This includes and generalizes the case of conformal coupling ξ = (1/6) we considered in 1999 Phys. Lett. B 466 127-34.) For these traversable wormholes to exist we demonstrate that the scalar field must reach trans-Planckian values somewhere in the geometry. We discuss how this can be accommodated within the current state of the art regarding scalar fields in modern theoretical physics. We emphasize that these scalar field theories, and the traversable wormhole solutions we derive, are compatible with all known experimental constraints from both particle physics and gravity.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aa0a77461978420e7591f2083fa6980d510ac626
How researchers see this paper
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Francisco S. N. Lobo
- J. Lemos
- P. Crawford
- Tiberiu Harko
- P. Moraes
- Salvatore Capozziello
- V. Cardoso
- S. D. Maharaj
In Nuclear and High Energy Physics
- Francisco S. N. Lobo
- J. Lemos
- P. Crawford
- Tiberiu Harko
- P. Moraes
- V. Cardoso
- Salvatore Capozziello
- Sergei D. Odintsov
In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Citations in the corpus
- Morris-Thorne wormholes with a cosmological constant (2003, background): “Indeed, it is a basic fact for the construction of traversable wormholes that the null energy condition, the weakest of the conditions, has to be violated.”
- Exotic solutions in General Relativity: Traversable wormholes and 'warp drive' spacetimes (2007, background): “Additionally, certain classical systems (such as non-minimally coupled scalar fields) have been found that violate the null and the weak energy conditions [31, 44].”