ADM mass in warp drive spacetimes

Abstract

What happens when a warp bubble has mass? This seemingly innocent question forces one to carefully formalize exactly what one means by a warp bubble, exactly what one means by having the warp bubble "move" with respect to the fixed stars, and forces one to more carefully examine the notion of mass in warp-drive spacetimes. This is the goal of the present article. In this process, we will see that often-made throw-away comments regarding "payloads" are even simpler than commonly assumed, while there are two further, distinct yet subtle ways in which a mass can appear in connection with a warp drive space-time: One, that the warp bubble (not its payload) has the mass; two, that the mass is a background feature in front of which the warp drive moves. For simplicity, we consider generic Natário warp drives with zero-vorticity flow field. The resulting spacetimes are sufficiently simple to allow an exact and fully explicit computation of all of the stress-energy components, and verify that (as expected) the null energy condition (NEC) is violated. Likewise the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions (WEC, SEC, DEC) are violated. Indeed, this confirms the community's folk wisdom, and recent (fully general, but implicit) results of the present authors which closed previous gaps in the argument. However, folk wisdom should be carefully and critically examined before being believed, and the present examples for general results will greatly aid physical intuition.

arXiv commentV1:19 pages; V2: 22 pages. Authors re-ordered, abstract rewritten; 4 references added; improved presentation and discussion; calculations unaltered; physics conclusions unaltered

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Influence of anisotropic matter on the Alcubierre metric and other related metrics: revisiting the problem of negative energy
• A Closer Look at Natário's Zero-Expansion Warp Drive
• Black Holes, Warp Drives, and Energy Conditions
• A warp drive with predominantly positive invariant energy density and global Hawking-Ellis Type I
• The spacetime geodesy of perfect fluid spheres