Theory-agnostic parametrization of wormhole spacetimes

TL;DR

This paper extends a model-independent framework for describing black holes to include traversable wormholes, demonstrating that a few key parameters can capture observable features like shadows and quasinormal modes.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized parametrization method for wormhole spacetimes applicable across various metric theories of gravity.

Findings

Few parameters suffice to describe observable wormhole features.

Application to known wormhole metrics validates the parametrization.

Potential to distinguish wormholes from black holes via observations.

Abstract

We present a generalization of the Rezzolla-Zhidenko theory-agnostic parametrization of black-hole spacetimes to accommodate spherically-symmetric Lorentzian, traversable wormholes (WHs) in an arbitrary metric theory of gravity. By applying our parametrization to various known WH metrics and performing calculations involving shadows and quasinormal modes, we show that only a few parameters are important for finding potentially observable quantities in a WH spacetime.