From wormhole to time machine: Comments on Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture

A lower bound on the size of a Lorentzian wormhole can be obtained by semiclassically introducing the Planck cut-off on the magnitude of tidal forces (Horowitz-Ross constraint). Also, an upper bound is provided by the quantum field theoretic constraint in the form of the Ford-Roman Quantum Inequality for massless minimally coupled scalar fields. To date, however, exact static solutions belonging to this scalar field theory have not been worked out to verify these bounds. To f...

In the present paper we discuss properties of a model of a ring wormhole, recently proposed by Gibbons and Volkov. Such a wormhole connects two flat spacetimes which are glued through discs of the radius $a$ bounded by the string with negative angle deficit $-2\pi$. The presence of the string's matter violating null energy condition makes the wormhole static and traversable. We study gravitational field of static sources in such a spacetime in the weak field approximation. In...

In this work we show the existence of traversable wormhole and time-machine solutions in a modified theory of gravity where matter and curvature are nonminimally coupled. Those solutions present a nontrivial redshift function and exist even in the presence of ordinary matter which satisfies the dominant energy condition.

A unified framework for black holes and traversible wormholes is described, where both are locally defined by outer trapping horizons, two-way traversible for wormholes and one-way traversible for black or white holes. In a two-dimensional dilaton gravity model, examples are given of: construction of wormholes from black holes; operation of wormholes for transport, including back-reaction; maintenance of an operating wormhole; and collapse of wormholes to black holes. In sphe...

Space-time wormholes were introduced in Wheeler's idea of space-time foam. Traversible wormholes as defined by Morris & Thorne became popular as potential short cuts across the universe and even time machines. More recently, the author proposed a general theory of wormhole dynamics, unified with black-hole dynamics. This article gives a brief review of the above ideas and summarizes progress on wormhole dynamics in the last year. Firstly, a numerical study of dynamical pertur...

In this paper, we obtain novel traversable, static, and spherically symmetric wormhole solutions, derived from the effective energy density and isotropic pressure resulting from the Casimir effect, corrected by the Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP) within the framework of Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC). The goal is to explore the interplay between competing quantum gravity effects and quantum vacuum phenomena in the emergence of non-trivial spacetime structures. We examin...

Wormholes are intriguing classical solutions in General Relativity, that have fascinated theoretical physicists for decades. In recent years, especially in Holography, gravitationalWormhole geometries have found a new life in many theoretical ideas related to quantum aspects of gravity. These ideas primarily revolve around aspects of quantum entanglement and quantum information in (semi-classical) gravity. This is an introductory and pedagogical review of Wormholes and their ...

Recently a bound on negative energy densities in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime was derived for a minimally coupled, quantized, massless, scalar field in an arbitrary quantum state. The bound has the form of an uncertainty principle-type constraint on the magnitude and duration of the negative energy density seen by a timelike geodesic observer. When spacetime is curved and/or has boundaries, we argue that the bound should hold in regions small compared to the minimum l...

Spacetime wormholes are evidently an essential component of the construction of a time machine. Within the context of general relativity, such objects require, for their formation, exotic matter -- matter that violates at least one of the standard energy conditions. Here, we explore the possibility that higher-curvature gravity theories might permit the construction of a wormhole without any matter at all. In particular, we consider the simplest form of a generalized quasi to...

While wormhole spacetimes are predictions of the general theory of relativity, specific solutions may not be compatible with quantum field theory. This paper modifies the charged wormhole model of Kim and Lee with the aim of satisfying an extended version of a quantum inequality due to Ford and Roman. The modified metric may be viewed as a solution of the Einstein field equations representing a charged wormhole that is compatible with quantum field theory.