Introducing Physical Warp Drives

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive classical relativity model for warp drives, including subluminal and superluminal solutions, reducing energy requirements and demonstrating that warp drives require propulsion, challenging previous notions of their unphysicality.

Contribution

It introduces a general model for warp drives that encompasses existing definitions, constructs new solutions satisfying quantum inequalities, and shows warp drives require propulsion, making them potentially feasible with current physics.

Findings

First general model for subluminal positive-energy warp drives

Superluminal solutions satisfying quantum inequalities

Reduced negative energy requirements by two orders of magnitude

Abstract

The Alcubierre warp drive is an exotic solution in general relativity. It allows for superluminal travel at the cost of enormous amounts of matter with negative mass density. For this reason, the Alcubierre warp drive has been widely considered unphysical. In this study, we develop a model of a general warp drive spacetime in classical relativity that encloses all existing warp drive definitions and allows for new metrics without the most serious issues present in the Alcubierre solution. We present the first general model for subluminal positive-energy, spherically symmetric warp drives; construct superluminal warp-drive solutions which satisfy quantum inequalities; provide optimizations for the Alcubierre metric that decrease the negative energy requirements by two orders of magnitude; and introduce a warp drive spacetime in which space capacity and the rate of time can be chosen in a controlled manner. Conceptually, we demonstrate that any warp drive, including the Alcubierre drive, is a shell of regular or exotic material moving inertially with a certain velocity. Therefore, any warp drive requires propulsion. We show that a class of subluminal, spherically symmetric warp drive spacetimes, at least in principle, can be constructed based on the physical principles known to humanity today.