We revisit to investigate shadows cast by Kerr-like wormholes. The boundary of the shadow is determined by unstable circular photon orbits. We find that, in certain parameter regions, the orbit is located at the throat of the Kerr-like wormhole, which was not considered in the literature. In these cases, the existence of the throat alters the shape of the shadow significantly, and makes it possible for us to differentiate it from that of a Kerr black hole.
This brief review discusses the existence conditions of wormhole throats and wormholes as global configurations in general relativity under the assumptions of cylindrical and axial symmetries. It is pointed out, in particular, that wormhole throats can exist in static, cylindrically symmetric space-times under slightly different conditions as compared with spherical symmetry. In cylindrical space-time with rotation, throats can exist in the presence of ordinary matter or even in vacuum; however, there are substantial difficulties in obtaining asymptotically flat wormhole configurations without…
We present a new definition of the wormhole throat including the flare-out condition and the traversability for general dynamical spacetimes in terms of null geodesic congruences. We will examine our definition for some examples and see advantages compared to the others.
Current ground-based gravitational wave detectors are tuned to capture the collision of compact objects such as stellar origin black holes and neutron stars; over 20 such events have been published to date. Theoretically, however, more exotic compact objects may exist, collisions of which should also generate copious gravitational waves. In this paper, we model the inspiral of a stellar mass black hole into a stable, non-spinning, traversable wormhole, and find a characteristic waveform -- an anti-chirp and/or burst -- as the black hole emerges, i.e., outspirals, into our region of the Univers…
The self-force of the electromagnetic charge in the space-time of a wormhole with an infinitely short throat is calculated. It is assumed that the charge is a source of an electromagnetic field that is in non-minimal connection with the curvature of space-time.
We consider wormhole geometries subject to a gravitational action consisting of non-linear powers of the Ricci scalar. Specifically, wormhole throats are studied in the case where Einstein gravity is supplemented with a Ricci-squared and inverse Ricci term. In this modified theory it is found that static wormhole throats respecting the weak energy condition can exist. The analysis is done locally in the vicinity of the throat, which eliminates certain restrictions on the models introduced by considering the global topology.
We consider the total energy loss and spectral density of uniformly moving electrically charged particles in the spacetime of a wormhole with an infinitely short throat. We show that the total energy loss $\mathcal{E} \sim e^2vγa^2/b^3$, where $γ$ is relativistic factor, $a$ is the radius of the wormhole's throat and $b$ is the impact factor. The spectrum of the energy for particles radially moving through the wormhole's throat $\mathcal{E} \sim e^2vγ/a$. The spectral density of the total energy has a maximum at frequency $ω_m \sim vγ/b$ and at $ω_m \sim vγ/a$ for radial motion.
The structure of the effective potential $V$ describing causal geodesics near the throat of an arbitrary spherical wormhole is analyzed. Einstein's equations relative to a set of regular coordinates covering a vicinity of the throat imply that any spherical wormhole can be constructed from solutions of an effective initial value problem with the throat serving as an initial value surface. The initial data involve matter variables, the area A(0) of the throat and the gradient $Λ(0)$ of the red shift factor on the throat. Whenever $Λ(0)=0$, the effective potential $V$ has a critical point on the…
Recently we have shown that for $2+1-$dimensional thin-shell wormholes a non-circular throat may lead to a physical wormhole in the sense that the energy conditions are satisfied. By the same token, herein we consider angular dependent throat geometry embedded in a $2+1-$dimensional flat spacetime in polar coordinates. It is shown that a generic, natural example of throat geometry is provided remarkably by a hypocycloid. That is, two flat $2+1-$dimensions are glued together along a hypocycloid. The energy required in each hypocycloid increases with the frequency of the roller circle inside the…
We calculate the Casimir energy-momentum tensor induced in a scalar field by a macroscopic ultrastatic spherically-symmetric long-throated traversable wormhole, and examine whether this exotic matter is sufficient to stabilise the wormhole itself. The Casimir energy-momentum tensor is obtained (within the $\mathbb{R}\times S_2$ throat) by a mode sum approach, using a sharp energy cut-off and the Abel-Plana formula; Lorentz invariance is then restored by use of a Pauli-Villars regulator. The massless conformally-coupled case is found to have a logarithmic divergence (which we renormalise) and a…
The vacuum polarization of the quantized scalar field with non-conformal coupling $ξ$ on the long throat of a wormhole background is calculated. It is shown that the stress-energy tensor of vacuum fluctuations in considered spacetime is determined by the local geometry of spacetime only. The self-consistent solutions of the semiclassical Einstein field equations describing a long throat of a traversable wormhole are obtained.
Wormholes and black holes have traditionally been treated a quite separate objects with relatively little overlap. The possibility of a connection arises in that wormholes, if they exist, might have profound influence on black holes, their event horizons, and their internal structure. After discussing some connections, we embark on an overview of what can generally be said about traversable wormhole throats. We discuss the violations of the energy conditions that typically occur at and near the throat of any traversable wormhole and emphasize the generic nature of this result. We discuss the o…
Adapting and extending a suggestion due to Page, we define a wormhole throat to be a marginally anti-trapped surface, that is, a closed two-dimensional spatial hypersurface such that one of the two future-directed null geodesic congruences orthogonal to it is just beginning to diverge. Typically a dynamic wormhole will possess two such throats, corresponding to the two orthogonal null geodesic congruences, and these two throats will not coincide, (though they do coalesce into a single throat in the static limit). The divergence property of the null geodesics at the marginally anti-trapped surf…
We construct explicit examples of globally regular static, spherically symmetric solutions of general relativity with a phantom scalar field as the source of gravity, describing traversable wormholes with flat asymptotic regions on both sides of the throat as well as regular black holes, in particular, those called black universes. To explain why such phantom fields are not observed under usual conditions, we invoke the concept of "invisible ghosts," which means that the phantom field decays quickly enough at infinity and is there too weak to be observed. This approach leads to wormhole models…
We construct wormholes in Einstein-vector-Gauss-Bonnet theory where a real massless vector field is coupled to the higher curvature Gauss-Bonnet invariant. We consider three coupling functions which depend on the square of the vector field. The respective domains of existence of wormholes possess as their boundaries i) black holes, ii) solutions with a singular throat, iii) solutions with a degenerate throat and iv) solutions with cusp singularities. Depending on the coupling function wormhole solutions can feature a single throat or an equator surrounded by a double throat. The wormhole solut…
A wormhole with a quantum throat on the basis of an approximate model of the spacetime foam is presented. An effective spinor field is introduced for the description of the spacetime foam. The consequences of such model of the wormhole is preventing a "naked'' singularity in the Reissner-Nordström solution with $|e|/m > 1$.
We consider a spherically symmetric line element which admits either a black hole geometry or a wormhole geometry and show that in both cases the apparent horizon or the wormhole throat is partially characterized by the zero-set of a single curvature invariant. The detection of the apparent horizon by this invariant is consistent with the geometric horizon detection conjectures and implies that it is a geometric horizon of the black hole, while the detection of the wormhole throat presents a conceptual problem for the conjectures. To distinguish between these surfaces, we determine a set of cu…
Traversable wormholes have traditionally been viewed as intrinsically topological entities in some multiply connected spacetime. Here, we show that topology is too limited a tool to accurately characterize a generic traversable wormhole: in general one needs geometric information to detect the presence of a wormhole, or more precisely to locate the wormhole throat. For an arbitrary static spacetime we shall define the wormhole throat in terms of a 2-dimensional constant-time hypersurface of minimal area. (Zero trace for the extrinsic curvature plus a "flare-out" condition.) This enables us to …
We present a polymer quantization of spherically symmetric Einstein gravity in which the polymerized variable is the area of the Einstein-Rosen wormhole throat. In the classical polymer theory, the singularity is replaced by a bounce at a radius that depends on the polymerization scale. In the polymer quantum theory, we show numerically that the area spectrum is evenly-spaced and in agreement with a Bohr-Sommerfeld semiclassical estimate, and this spectrum is not qualitatively sensitive to issues of factor ordering or boundary conditions except in the lowest few eigenvalues. In the limit of sm…
We consider the generalized Tolman solution of general relativity, describing the evolution of a spherical dust cloud in the presence of an external electric or magnetic field. The solution contains three arbitrary functions $f(R)$, $F(R)$ and $τ_0(R)$, where $R$ is a radial coordinate in the comoving reference frame. The solution splits into three branches corresponding to hyperbolic ($f >0$), parabolic ($f=0$) and elliptic ($f < 0$) types of motion. In such models, we study the possible existence of wormhole throats defined as spheres of minimum radius at a fixed time instant, and prove the …
The present paper is intended for studying the effect of strong gravitational lensing in the context of charged wormhole. To study this effect, the conditions determining the existence of photon spheres at and outside the throat are obtained. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of photon spheres at or outside the throat of the charged wormhole is derived. Furthermore, photon spheres are investigated in three cases for three different forms of redshift function. These three cases include the existence of effective photon spheres (i) at the throat, (ii) outside the throat a…
We consider Lorentzian wormholes supported by a phantom field and threaded by non-trivial Yang-Mills fields, which may be regarded as hair on the Ellis wormhole. Like the Bartnik-McKinnon solutions and their associated hairy black holes, these hairy wormholes form infinite sequences, labeled by the node number $k$ of their gauge field function. We discuss the throat geometry of these wormholes, showing that odd-$k$ solutions may exhibit a double-throat, and evaluate their global charges. We analyze the limiting behavior exhibited by wormhole solutions as the gravitational coupling becomes larg…
In this work we study and compare the features of gravitational entropy near the throat of transversable wormholes formed by exotic matter and wormholes in galactic halos. We have verified that gravitational entropy and entropy density of these wormholes in regions near their throats are indistinguishable for objects of same throat, despite the fact they are described by different metrics and by distinct energy-momentum tensors. We have found that the gravitational entropy density diverges near the throat for both cases, probably due to a non-trivial topology at this point, however allowing th…
Using simplicial minisuperspace techniques we obtain a wormhole configuration, capable of modelling both a throat between two equal Euclidean and Lorentzian universes. Computing the wavefunction associated to such configuration we conclude that for Planck-size Euclidean wormholes there is a prediction of a finite non-vanishing radius of their throat, even in the absence of matter. The wavefunction associated to their Lorentzian counterparts predicts the growth of the wormhole's throat as the two Lorentzian universes expand.
We consider a topologically nontrivial thin-shell wormhole with a throat in the form of a $T^2$ torus. It is shown that: (i)~such a wormhole is stable with respect to excitations of the throat; (ii)~not all energy conditions are violated for such wormholes; (iii)~if any of the energy conditions is violated, this violation occurs only partially in some region near the throat, and in other regions the violation is absent. Also, we discuss the differences between spherical $S^2$ wormholes and toroidal $T^2$ wormholes under investigation.
We consider stationary, cylindrically symmetric configurations in general relativity and formulate necessary conditions for the existence of rotating cylindrical wormholes. It is shown that in a comoving reference frame the rotational part of the gravitational field is separated from its static part and forms an effective stress-energy tensor with exotic properties, which favors the existence of wormhole throats. Exact vacuum and scalar-vacuum solutions (with a massless scalar) are considered as examples, and it turns out that even vacuum solutions can be of wormhole nature. However, solutions…
We discuss the peculiarities of gravitational lensing by spherically symmetric wormholes if they are not symmetric with respect to their throats. It is noticed, in particular, that wormholes always contain the so-called photon spheres, near which the photon deflection angles can be arbitrarily large, but, in general, the throat is such a sphere only for symmetric wormholes. In some cases, photons from outside can cross the throat and return back from a neighborhood of a photon sphere if the latter is located beyond the throat. Two families of generally asymmetric wormhole configurations are co…
We study geodesic motion near the throats of asymptotically flat, static, spherically~symmetric traversable wormholes supported by a self-gravitating minimally coupled phantom scalar field with an arbitrary self-interaction potential. We assume that any such wormhole possesses the reflection symmetry with respect to the throat, and consider only its observable "right~half". It turns out that the main features of bound orbits and photon trajectories close to the throats of such wormholes are very different from those near the horizons of black holes. We~distinguish between wormholes of two type…
We demonstrate that rotating matter sets the throat of an Ellis wormhole into rotation, allowing for wormholes which possess full reflection symmetry with respect to the two asymptotically flat spacetime regions. We analyze the properties of this new type of rotating wormholes and show that the wormhole geometry can change from a single throat to a double throat configuration. We further discuss the ergoregions and the lightring structure of these wormholes.
We extend previous proofs that violations of the null energy condition (NEC) are a generic and universal feature of traversable wormholes to completely non-symmetric time-dependent wormholes. We show that the analysis can be phrased purely in terms of local geometry at and near the wormhole throat, and do not have to make any technical assumptions about asymptotic flatness or other global properties. A key aspect of the analysis is the demonstration that time-dependent wormholes have two throats, one for each direction through the wormhole, and that the two throats coalesce only for the case o…
The self-energy and self-force for particles with electric and scalar charges at rest in the space-time of massless and massive wormholes are considered. The particle with electric charge is always attracted to wormhole throat for arbitrary profile of the throat. The self-force for scalar particle shows different behavior depending on the non-minimal coupling. The self-force for massive scalar field is localized close to the throat of the wormhole.
We study the existence and properties of wormhole throats in modified $f(R)$ gravity theory. Specifically, we concentrate on the cases where the lapse is not necessarily constant, and hence are not limited to the zero tidal force scenarios. In the class of theories whose actions are generated by Lagrangians of the form $f(R)=\sum α_{n}\,R^{n}$ we find parameters which allow for the existence of energy condition respecting throats, which do not exist in Einstein gravity. We also consider the effect of the modified action on the anisotropy of the models, and find that modified gravity can minimi…
We reconsider the generalized flare-out conditions in static wormhole throats given by Hochberg and Visser. We show that due to the presence of matter sources on the throat, these conditions are not applicable to the thin-shell wormholes.
As an extension of our previous work, which investigated the shadows of the Ellis wormhole surrounded by nonrotating dust, in this paper we study wormhole shadows in rotating dust flow. First, we derive steady-state solutions of slowly rotating dust surrounding the wormhole by solving relativistic Euler equations. Solving null geodesic equations and radiation transfer equations, we investigate the images of the wormhole surrounded by dust for the above steady-state solutions. Because the Ellis wormhole spacetime possesses unstable circular orbits of photons, a bright ring appears in the image,…
Smooth-throat wormholes are treated on as possessing quantum fluctuation energy with scalar massive field as its source. Heat kernel coefficients of the Laplace operator are calculated in background of the arbitrary-profile throat wormhole with the help of the zeta-function approach. Two specific profile are considered. Some arguments are given that the wormholes may exist. It serves as a solution of semiclassical Einstein equations in the range of specific values of length and certain radius of wormhole's throat and constant of non-minimal connection.
The null geodesic congruence for the Lorentzian version of Hawking's wormhole is studied, in spherical Rindler coordinates. One finds that the wormhole throat expands exponentially and the "flare - out" condition is satisfied. A time reversal is equivalent with an inversion applied to the radial coordinate. The stress energy is mostly located near wormhole's throat and the anisotropic fluid is comoving with the spherical distribution of accelerating observers. Far from the throat (the light cone in Cartesian coordinates) the negative energy density acquires an expression similar with the Casim…
Using traversable wormholes as theoretical background, we revisit a deep question of general relativity: Does a uniformly accelerated charged particle radiate? We particularize to the recently proposed gravitational Čerenkov radiation, that happens when the spatial part of the Ricci tensor is negative. If $^{^{(3+1)}}R^i_{\phantom{i}i}< 0$, the matter threading the gravitational field violates the weak energy condition. In this case, the effective refractive index for light is bigger than 1, i.e. particles propagates, in that medium, faster than photons. This leads to a violation of the equiva…
It was argued in literature that traversable wormholes can exist with arbitrarily small violation of null energy conditions. We show that if the amount of exotic material near the wormhole throat tends to zero, either this leads to a horn instead of a wormhole or the throat approaches the horizon in such a way that infnitely large stresses develop on the throat.
In this work, we consider the full Horndeski Lagrangian applied to wormhole geometries and present the full gravitational field equations. We analyse the general constraints imposed by the flaring-out conditions at the wormhole throat and consider a plethora of specific subclasses of the Horndeski Lagrangian, namely, quintessence/phantom fields, $k$-essence, scalar-tensor theories, covariant galileons, nonminimal kinetic coupling, kinetic gravity braiding, and the scalar-tensor representation of Gauss-Bonnet couplings, amongst others. The generic constraints analysed in this work serve as a co…
We consider the self-energy and the self-force for an electrically charged particle at rest in the wormhole space-time. We develop general approach and apply it to two specific profiles of the wormhole throat with singular and with smooth curvature. The self-force for these two profiles is found in manifest form; it is an attractive force. We also find an expression for the self-force in the case of arbitrary symmetric throat profile. Far from the throat the self-force is always attractive.
We show that the cold horizon of the extremal Reissner-Nordström can be considered as the throat of a thin-shell wormhole with zero total exotic matter and positive angular pressure. Such a wormhole is physical and stable against radial perturbations provided an appropriate perfect fluid exists at the throat.
We construct numerically the symmetric non-Abelian wormholes which are supported by a phantom field in the Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs theory beyond Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) limit where the Higgs self-interaction constant $λ$ is non-vanishing. Analogous to the BPS limit, the probe limit is the Yang-Mills-Higgs field in the background of the Ellis wormhole when the gravity is switched off. In the presence of gravity, the wormhole solutions possess the Yang-Mills-Higgs hair where families of hairy wormholes solutions emerge from the Ellis wormhole when the gravitational coupling consta…
We revisit the shapes of the throats of wormholes, including thin-shell wormholes (TSWs) in $2+1-$dimensions. In particular, in the case of TSWs this is done in a flat $2+1-$dimensional bulk spacetime by using the standard method of cut-and-paste. Upon departing from a pure time-dependent circular shape i.e., $r=a\left( t\right) $ for the throat, we employ a $% θ-$dependent closed loop of the form $r=R\left( t,θ\right) ,$ and in terms of $R\left( t,θ\right) $ we find the surface energy density $σ$ on the throat. For the specific convex shapes we find that the total energy which supports the wo…
The thin-shell wormhole created using the Darmois-Israel formalism applied to Robinson-Trautman family of spacetimes is presented. The stress energy tensor created on the throat is interpreted in terms of two dust streams and it is shown that asymptotically this wormhole settles to the Schwarzschild wormhole with a throat located at the horizon position. This behavior shows a nonlinear stability (within the Robinson-Trautman class) of this spherically symmetric wormhole. The gravitational radiation emitted by the Robinson-Trautman wormhole during the transition to spherical symmetry is indisti…
