Vacuum polarization of a massive scalar field in a wormhole spacetime

TL;DR

This paper numerically investigates the vacuum polarization effects of a massive scalar field in a wormhole spacetime, revealing that quantum effects alone cannot sustain the wormhole structure.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical analysis of vacuum polarization in a wormhole background for various coupling constants, highlighting limitations of quantum support for wormholes.

Findings

Vacuum polarization cannot self-consistently support the wormhole.

The energy-momentum tensor does not violate the null energy condition near the throat.

Numerical results depend on the coupling constant .

Abstract

We calculate the vacuum average value of the field square and the stress-energy tensor of a massive scalar field, with non-minimal coupling $\xi$ to the curvature in the short-throat flat-space wormhole background. The obtained results are not suitable for an analytical analysis and for this reason we provide a numerical analysis for different values of the coupling constant, $\xi$. It was shown that the vacuum polarization cannot self-consistently support the wormhole. Otherwise, the energy-momentum tensor does not violate the null energy condition near the throat.