No Arabic abstract
The realm of strong classical gravity and perhaps even quantum gravity are waiting to be explored. In this letter we consider the recently detected triple system composed of two stars and a non-accreting black hole. Using published observations of this system we conduct the most sensitive test to date for whether the black hole is actually a wormhole by looking for orbital perturbations due to an object on the other side of the wormhole. The mass limit obtained on the perturber is $sim4$ orders of magnitude better than for observations of S2 orbiting the supermassive black hole at Sgr A*. We also consider how observations of a pulsar could test for whether the black hole in a pulsar-black hole binary is a wormhole. A pulsar in a similar orbit to S2 would be $sim10$ orders of magnitude more sensitive than observations of S2. For a nominal pulsar-black hole binary of stellar masses, with orbital size similar to that of the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar, one year of observations could set a mass limit on a perturber that is $sim6$ orders of magnitude better than observations of a pulsar around Sgr~A*. A range of limits between the pulsar-Sgr~A* and Hulse-Taylor cases could be obtained for a possible population of pulsar-black hole binaries that may exist near the galactic center.
We study the time evolution of the test scalar and electromagnetic fields perturbations in configurations of phantom wormholes surrounded by dark energy with state parameter $omega< -1$. We observe obvious signals of echoes reflecting wormholes properties and disclose the physical reasons behind such phenomena. In particular, we find that the dark energy equation of state has a clear imprint in echoes in wave perturbations. When $omega$ approaches the phantom divide $omega=-1$ from below, the delay time of echoes becomes longer. The echo of gravitational wave is likely to be detected in the near future, the signature of the dark energy equation of state in the echo spectrum can serve as a local measurement of the dark energy.
The effect of the Gauss-Bonnet term on the existence and dynamical stability of thin-shell wormholes as negative tension branes is studied in the arbitrary dimensional spherically, planar, and hyperbolically symmetric spacetimes. We consider radial perturbations against the shell for the solutions which have the Z${}_2$ symmetry and admit the general relativistic limit. It is shown that the Gauss-Bonnet term shrinks the parameter region admitting static wormholes. The effect of the Gauss-Bonnet term on the stability depends on the spacetime symmetry. For planar symmetric wormholes, the Gauss-Bonnet term does not affect their stability. If the coupling constant is positive but small, the Gauss-Bonnet term tends to destabilize spherically symmetric wormholes, while it stabilizes hypebolically symmetric wormholes. The Gauss-Bonnet term can destabilize hypebolically symmetric wormholes as a non-perturbative effect, however, spherically symmetric wormholes cannot be stable.
Wormholes are hypothetical topologically-non-trivial structures of the spacetime. From the theoretical point of view, the possibility of their existence is challenging but cannot be ruled out. This article is a compact and non-exhaustive review of past and current efforts to search for astrophysical wormholes in the Universe.
We derive the equations of motion of a test particle in the equatorial plane around a static and spherically symmetric wormhole influenced by a radiation field including the general relativistic Poynting-Robertson effect. From the analysis of this dynamical system, we develop a diagnostic to distinguish a black hole from a wormhole, which can be timely supported by several and different observational data. This procedure is based on the possibility of having some wormhole metrics, which smoothly connect to the Schwarzschild metric in a small transition surface layer very close to the black hole event horizon. To detect such a metric-change, we analyse the emission proprieties from the critical hypersurface (stable region where radiation and gravitational fields balance) together with those from an accretion disk in the Schwarzschild spacetime toward a distant observer. Indeed, if the observational data are well fitted within such model, it immediately implies the existence of a black hole; while in case of strong departures from such description it means that a wormhole could be present. Finally, we discuss our results and draw the conclusions.
The brane cosmology scenario is based on the idea that our Universe is a 3-brane embedded in a five-dimensional bulk. In this work, a general class of braneworld wormholes is explored with $R eq 0$, where $R$ is the four dimensional Ricci scalar, and specific solutions are further analyzed. A fundamental ingredient of traversable wormholes is the violation of the null energy condition (NEC). However, it is the effective total stress energy tensor that violates the latter, and in this work, the stress energy tensor confined on the brane, threading the wormhole, is imposed to satisfy the NEC. It is also shown that in addition to the local high-energy bulk effects, nonlocal corrections from the Weyl curvature in the bulk may induce a NEC violating signature on the brane. Thus, braneworld gravity seems to provide a natural scenario for the existence of traversable wormholes.