Epicyclic frequencies in static and spherically symmetric wormhole geometries

TL;DR

This paper derives explicit formulas for epicyclic frequencies in static, spherically symmetric wormhole geometries to aid in their detection and differentiation from black holes using astrophysical observations.

Contribution

It provides the first explicit expressions for epicyclic frequencies in wormhole spacetimes and discusses their application in observationally distinguishing wormholes from black holes.

Findings

Explicit formulas for epicyclic frequencies in wormhole geometries

Method to differentiate wormholes from black holes observationally

Potential to reconstruct wormhole solutions from data

Abstract

The measurement of the epicyclic frequencies is a widely used astrophysical technique to infer information on a given self-gravitating system and on the related gravity background. We derive their explicit expressions in static and spherically symmetric wormhole spacetimes. We discuss how these theoretical results can be applied to: (1) detect the presence of a wormhole, distinguishing it by a black hole; (2) reconstruct wormhole solutions through the fit of the observational data, once we have them. Finally, we discuss the physical implications of our proposed epicyclic method.