A sensitive search for wormholes

TL;DR

This paper presents highly sensitive tests for detecting wormholes using observations of a triple star-black hole system and pulsar-black hole binaries, significantly improving constraints on wormhole presence compared to previous methods.

Contribution

It introduces the most sensitive observational limits to date on wormholes by analyzing orbital perturbations in specific astrophysical systems, surpassing prior constraints by several orders of magnitude.

Findings

Mass limits on potential wormhole perturbers are up to 4 orders of magnitude better than previous Sgr A* observations.

Pulsar observations could improve wormhole detection sensitivity by up to 10 orders of magnitude.

One year of pulsar-black hole binary observations could set mass limits on perturbers 6 orders of magnitude better than current Sgr A* pulsar data.

Abstract

The realm of strong classical gravity and perhaps even quantum gravity are waiting to be explored. In this letter we consider the recently detected triple system composed of two stars and a non-accreting black hole. Using published observations of this system we conduct the most sensitive test to date for whether the black hole is actually a wormhole by looking for orbital perturbations due to an object on the other side of the wormhole. The mass limit obtained on the perturber is $\sim4$ orders of magnitude better than for observations of S2 orbiting the supermassive black hole at Sgr A*. We also consider how observations of a pulsar could test for whether the black hole in a pulsar-black hole binary is a wormhole. A pulsar in a similar orbit to S2 would be $\sim10$ orders of magnitude more sensitive than observations of S2. For a nominal pulsar-black hole binary of stellar masses, with orbital size similar to that of the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar, one year of observations could set a mass limit on a perturber that is $\sim6$ orders of magnitude better than observations of a pulsar around Sgr~A*. A range of limits between the pulsar-Sgr~A* and Hulse-Taylor cases could be obtained for a possible population of pulsar-black hole binaries that may exist near the galactic center.