Warp Drive With Zero Expansion

Abstract

It is commonly believed that Alcubierre's warp drive works by contracting space in front of the warp bubble and expanding space behind it. We show that this expansion/contraction is but a marginal consequence of the choice made by Alcubierre, and explicitly construct a similar spacetime where no contraction/expansion occurs. Global and optical properties of warp drive spacetimes are also discussed.

8 pages, 3 figures; typos corrected, references added

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