Traversable wormholes and energy conditions in Lovelock-Brans-Dicke gravity

TL;DR

This paper explores the conditions under which traversable wormholes can exist in Lovelock-Brans-Dicke gravity, highlighting how topological effects can support wormholes without violating all classical energy conditions.

Contribution

It introduces the role of spacetime parity and topology in supporting wormholes within Lovelock-Brans-Dicke gravity, extending the analysis to Brans-Dicke theory as a special case.

Findings

Wormholes require violation of the generalized null energy condition.

Standard null energy condition can be satisfied by matter in zero-tidal-force solutions.

Topological effects dominate over ordinary matter in supporting wormholes.

Abstract

Following the recent theory of Lovelock-Brans-Dicke gravity, we continue to investigate the conditions to support traversable wormholes by the gravitational effects of spacetime parity and topology, which arise from the nonminimal couplings of a background scalar field to the Chern-Pontryagin density and the Gauss-Bonnet invariant. The flaring-out condition indicates that a Morris-Thorne-type wormhole can be maintained by violating the generalized null energy condition, and thus also breaking down the generalized weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions; meanwhile, analyses of the zero-tidal-force solution show that the standard null energy condition in general relativity can still be respected by the physical matter threading the wormhole. This way, the two topological effects have to dominate over the ordinary-matter source of gravity, and the scalar field is preferred to be noncanonical. By treating Brans-Dicke gravity as a reduced situation of Lovelock-Brans-Dicke gravity, we also examine the Brans-Dicke wormholes and energy conditions.