Phantom energy traversable wormholes

By Francisco S. N. Lobo. 2005

405 citations recorded by the source corpus.

It has been suggested that a possible candidate for the present accelerated expansion of the Universe is 'phantom energy'. The latter possesses an equation of state of the form {omega}{identical_to}p/{rho}<-1, consequently violating the null energy condition. As this is the fundamental ingredient to sustain traversable wormholes, this cosmic fluid presents us with a natural scenario for the existence of these exotic geometries. 'Note, however, that the notion of phantom energy is that of a homogeneously distributed fluid. Nevertheless, it can be extended to inhomogeneous spherically symmetric spacetimes, and it is shown that traversable wormholes may be supported by phantom energy. Because of the fact of the accelerating Universe, macroscopic wormholes could naturally be grown from the submicroscopic constructions that originally pervaded the quantum foam. One could also imagine an advanced civilization mining the cosmic fluid for phantom energy necessary to construct and sustain a traversable wormhole. In this context, we investigate the physical properties and characteristics of traversable wormholes constructed using the equation of state p={omega}{rho}, with {omega}<-1. We analyze specific wormhole geometries, considering asymptotically flat spacetimes and imposing an isotropic pressure. We also construct a thin shell around the interior wormhole solution, by imposing the phantom energy equation ofmore » state on the surface stresses. Using the 'volume integral quantifier' we verify that it is theoretically possible to construct these geometries with vanishing amounts of averaged null energy condition violating phantom energy. Specific wormhole dimensions and the traversal velocity and time are also deduced from the traversability conditions for a particular wormhole geometry. These phantom energy traversable wormholes have far-reaching physical and cosmological implications. For instance, an advanced civilization may use these geometries to induce closed timelike curves, consequently violating causality.« less

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b26a55740f18605b343deeff69e04890ec33db71

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Citations in the corpus

Stability of phantom wormholes (2005, methodology): “To construct an asymptotically flat wormhole solution [22], consider Φ(r) = const.”
Instability of wormholes supported by a ghost scalar field: I. Linear stability analysis (2008, background): “On the other hand, a class of wormhole solutions which are supported by phantom energy have recently been constructed in [20, 21] and shown to be stable with respect to perturbations inside this class [22].”
Stability analysis of dynamic thin shells (2005, methodology): “Recently, it was also shown that traversable wormholes may be supported by phantom energy [30, 31], a null energy condition violating cosmic fluid responsible for the present accelerated expansion of the universe.”
Stable dark energy stars (2005, methodology): “There is, however, a subtle point that needs to be emphasized [32, 33].”
Exotic solutions in General Relativity: Traversable wormholes and 'warp drive' spacetimes (2007, methodology): “The dynamic stability of these phantom wormholes were also analyzed[160], and we refer the reader to [159, 161] for further examples.”