Matter traveling through a wormhole

TL;DR

This paper presents numerical simulations of matter traveling through Ellis-Bronnikov-Morris-Thorne wormholes, demonstrating how different scalar field pulses affect wormhole stability and enabling signals to pass through before collapse.

Contribution

It introduces a new numerical code for evolving wormholes and shows for the first time matter can traverse and send signals through collapsing or expanding wormholes.

Findings

Regular matter can travel through wormholes before collapse.

A pulse of ghost scalar field causes wormhole expansion.

Matter pulses through asymmetric wormholes have been simulated.

Abstract

We revisit the numerical evolution of Ellis-Bronnikov-Morris-Thorne wormholes, which are constructed with a massless real ghost scalar field. For our simulations, we have developed a new code based on the standard 3+1 foliation of spacetime. We confirm that, for the massless symmetric wormhole, a pulse of regular scalar field causes the wormhole throat to collapse and form an apparent horizon, while a pulse of ghost scalar field can cause the wormhole throat to expand. As a new result, we show that it is possible for a pulse of regular matter to travel through the wormhole and then to send a light signal back before the wormhole collapses. We also evolve pulses of matter traveling through massive asymmetric wormholes, which has not previously been simulated.