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

In this talk I discuss pertinence of the wormholes to the problem of circumventing the light speed barrier and present a specific class of wormholes. The wormholes of this class are static and have arbitrarily wide throats, which makes them traversable. The matter necessary for these spacetimes to be solutions of the Einstein equations is shown to consist of two components, one of which satisfies the Weak energy condition and the other is produced by vacuum fluctuations of ne...

Evidence to the case that classical gravitation provides the clue to make sense out of quantum gravity is presented. The key observation is the existence in classical gravitation of child universe solutions or "almost" solutions, "almost" because of some singularity problems. The difficulties of these child universe solutions due to their generic singularity problems will be very likely be cured by quantum effects, just like for example "almost" instanton solutions are made r...

An introduction is given to discussions on the possiblity of fabricating spacetime geometries allowing time-travel scenarios with the help of matter possessing typically quantum features. Those scenarios are considered in the framework of quantum field theory and general relativity. Results established in the literature excluding the possibility of time-travel are presented.

Recently, black hole and brane production at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been widely discussed. We suggest that there is a possibility to test causality at the LHC. We argue that if the scale of quantum gravity is of the order of few TeVs, proton-proton collisions at the LHC could lead to the formation of time machines (spacetime regions with closed timelike curves) which violate causality. One model for the time machine is a traversable wormhole. We argue that the...

We present strong arguments that the deep structure of the quantum vacuum contains a web of microscopic wormholes or short-cuts. We develop the concept of wormhole spaces and show that this web of wormholes generate a peculiar array of long-range correlations in the patterns of vacuum fluctuations on the Planck scale. We conclude that this translocal structure represents the common cause for both the BH-entropy-area law, the more general holographic principle and the entangle...

In this paper, we explore the possibility of the formation of a traversable wormhole geometry in General Relativity sustained by particle creation mechanism. Gravitational particle creation mechanism is a thermodynamic approach to generate repulsive back-reaction gravitational effects through the thermodynamic creation of particles. This repulsive back-reaction pressure can be thought of as a source of sustaining a traversable wormhole. In the first part of this paper, we sys...

Wormholes allowed by the general theory of relativity that are simultaneously traversable by humanoid travelers are subject to severe constraints from quantum field theory, particularly the so-called quantum inequalities, here slightly extended. Moreover, self-collapse of such wormholes can only be prevented by the use of "exotic matter," which, being rather problematical, should be used in only minimal quantities. However, making the layer of exotic matter arbitrarily thin l...

It is shown in a variant of two dimensional dilaton gravity theories that an arbitrary, localized massive source put in an initially regular spacetime gives rise to formation of the wormhole classically, without accompanying the curvature singularity. The semiclassical quantum correction under this wormhole spacetime yields Hawking radiation. It is expected, with the quantum back reaction added to the classical equation, that the information loss paradox may be resolved in th...

We investigate a nucleation of a Euclidean wormhole and its analytic continuation to Lorentzian signatures in Gauss-Bonnet-dilaton gravity, where this model can be embedded by the type-II superstring theory. We show that there exists a Euclidean wormhole solution in this model by choosing a suitable shape of the dilaton potential. After the analytic continuation, this explains a quantum creation of a time-like traversable wormhole. Finally, we discuss relations to the informa...

Analogue gravity systems offer many insights into gravitational phenomena, both at the classical and at the semiclassical level. The existence of an underlying Minkowskian structure (or Galilean in the non-relativistic limit) in the laboratory has been argued to directly forbid the simulation of geometries with Closed Timelike Curves (CTCs) within analogue systems. We will show that this is not strictly the case. In principle, it is possible to simulate spacetimes with CTCs w...