On the Wormhole--Warp Drive Correspondence

Abstract

We propose a correspondence between the Morris--Thorne wormhole metric and a warp drive metric, which generalizes an earlier result by H. Ellis regarding the Schwarzschild black hole metric and makes it possible to embed a warp drive in a wormhole background. We demonstrate that in order to do that, one needs to also generalize the Natario--Alcubierre definition of warp drive and introduce nonzero intrinsic curvature. However, we also find out that in order to be traversable by a warp drive, the wormhole should have a horizon: in other words, humanly traversable wormholes cannot be traversed by a warp drive, and vice versa. We also discuss possible loopholes in this "no-go" theorem

RevTeX4 7 pages, 1 figure. References added and revised introduction. New equations included