Quantum wormholes

Journal Article · Tue Jan 15 00:00:00 EST 1991 · Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (USA)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.43.402· OSTI ID:6195000

Visser, M ^[1]

---

1. Physics Department, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130-4899 (US)

This paper presents an application of quantum-mechanical principles to a microscopic variant of the traversable wormholes recently introduced by Morris and Thorne. The analysis, based on the surgical grafting of two Reissner-Nordstroem spacetimes, proceeds by using a minisuperspace model to approximate the geometry of these wormholes. The thin shell'' formalism is applied to this minisuperspace model to extract the effective Lagrangian appropriate to this one-degree-of-freedom system. This effective Lagrangian is then quantized and the wave function for the wormhole is explicitly exhibited. A slightly more general class of wormholes---corresponding to the addition of some dust'' to the wormhole throat---is analyzed by recourse to WKB techniques. In all cases discussed in this paper, the expectation value of the wormhole radius is calculated to be of the order of the Planck length. Accordingly, though these quantum wormholes are of considerable theoretical interest they do not appear to be useful as a means for interstellar travel. The results of this paper may also have a bearing on the question of topological fluctuations in quantum gravity. These calculations serve to suggest that topology-changing effects might in fact be {ital suppressed} by quantum-gravity effects.

• OSTI ID: 6195000
• Journal Information: Physical Review, D (Particles Fields); (USA), Vol. 43:2; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
QUANTUM GRAVITY
TOPOLOGY
COSMOLOGY
EINSTEIN FIELD EQUATIONS
LAGRANGIAN FUNCTION
QUANTUM MECHANICS
SPACE-TIME
WAVE FUNCTIONS
WKB APPROXIMATION
EQUATIONS
FIELD EQUATIONS
FIELD THEORIES
FUNCTIONS
MATHEMATICS
MECHANICS
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
657003* - Theoretical & Mathematical Physics- Relativity & Gravitation