No Arabic abstract
This work is essentially a review of a new spacetime model with closed causal curves, recently presented in another paper (Class. Quantum Grav. textbf{35}(16) (2018), 165003). The spacetime at issue is topologically trivial, free of curvature singularities, and even time and space orientable. Besides summarizing previous results on causal geodesics, tidal accelerations and violations of the energy conditions, here redshift/blueshift effects and the Hawking-Ellis classification of the stress-energy tensor are examined.
Inspired by some recent works of Tippett-Tsang and Mallary-Khanna-Price, we present a new spacetime model containing closed timelike curves (CTCs). This model is obtained postulating an ad hoc Lorentzian metric on $mathbb{R}^4$, which differs from the Minkowski metric only inside a spacetime region bounded by two concentric tori. The resulting spacetime is topologically trivial, free of curvature singularities and is both time and space orientable; besides, the inner region enclosed by the smaller torus is flat and displays geodesic CTCs. Our model shares some similarities with the time machine of Ori and Soen but it has the advantage of a higher symmetry in the metric, allowing for the explicit computation of a class of geodesics. The most remarkable feature emerging from this computation is the presence of future-oriented timelike geodesics starting from a point in the outer Minkowskian region, moving to the inner spacetime region with CTCs, and then returning to the initial spatial position at an earlier time; this means that time travel to the past can be performed by free fall across our time machine. The amount of time travelled into the past is determined quantitatively; this amount can be made arbitrarily large keeping non-large the proper duration of the travel. An important drawback of the model is the violation of the classical energy conditions, a common feature of many time machines. Other problems emerge from our computations of the required (negative) energy densities and of the tidal accelerations; these are small only if the time machine is gigantic.
These lecture notes were prepared for a 25-hour course for advanced undergraduate students participating in Perimeter Institutes Undergraduate Summer Program. The lectures cover some of what is currently known about the possibility of superluminal travel and time travel within the context of established science, that is, general relativity and quantum field theory. Previous knowledge of general relativity at the level of a standard undergraduate-level introductory course is recommended, but all the relevant material is included for completion and reference. No previous knowledge of quantum field theory, or anything else beyond the standard undergraduate curriculum, is required. Advanced topics in relativity, such as causal structures, the Raychaudhuri equation, and the energy conditions are presented in detail. Once the required background is covered, concepts related to faster-than-light travel and time travel are discussed. After introducing tachyons in special relativity as a warm-up, exotic spacetime geometries in general relativity such as warp drives and wormholes are discussed and analyzed, including their limitations. Time travel paradoxes are also discussed in detail, including some of their proposed resolutions.
A two-level atom freely falling towards a Schwarzschild black hole was recently shown to detect radiation in the Boulware vacuum in an insightful paper [M. O. Scully et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115, 8131 (2018)]. The two-state atom acts as a dipole detector and its interaction with the field can be modeled using a quantum optics approach. The relative acceleration between the scalar field and the detector causes the atom to detect the radiation. In this paper, we show that this acceleration radiation is driven by the near-horizon physics of the black hole. This insight reinforces the relevance of near-horizon conformal quantum mechanics for all the physics associated with the thermodynamic properties of the black hole. We additionally highlight the conformal aspects of the radiation that is given by a Planck distribution with the Hawking temperature.
This is the first of a series of papers in which we use analyticity properties of quantum fields propagating on a spacetime to uncover a new multiverse geometry when the classical geometry has horizons and/or singularities. The nature and origin of the multiverse idea presented in this paper, that is shared by the fields in the standard model coupled to gravity, is different from other notions of a multiverse. Via analyticity we are able to establish definite relations among the universes. In this paper we illustrate these properties for the extended Rindler space, while black hole spacetime and the cosmological geometry of mini-superspace (see Appendix B) will appear in later papers. In classical general relativity, extended Rindler space is equivalent to flat Minkowski space; it consists of the union of the four wedges in (u,v) light-cone coordinates as in Fig.(1). In quantum mechanics, the wavefunction is an analytic function of (u,v) that is sensitive to branch points at the horizons u=0 or v=0, with branch cuts attached to them. The wavefunction is uniquely defined by analyticity on an infinite number of sheets in the cut analytic (u,v) spacetime. This structure is naturally interpreted as an infinite stack of identical Minkowski geometries, or universes, connected to each other by analyticity across branch cuts, such that each sheet represents a different Minkowski universe when (u,v) are analytically continued to the real axis on any sheet. We show in this paper that, in the absence of interactions, information doesnt flow from one Rindler sheet to another. By contrast, for an eternal black hole spacetime, which may be viewed as a modification of Rindler that includes gravitational interactions, analyticity shows how information is lost due to a flow to other universes, enabled by an additional branch point and cut due to the black hole singularity.
We exhibit a particular free subarrangement of a certain restriction of the Weyl arrangement of type $E_7$ and use it to give an affirmative answer to a recent conjecture by T.~Abe on the nature of additionally free and stair-free arrangements.