Wormholes supported by a phantom energy

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that inhomogeneous distributions of phantom energy can support static wormholes, providing exact solutions and analyzing the constraints on the energy distribution near the wormhole's throat.

Contribution

It extends the concept of phantom energy to inhomogeneous spacetimes and presents exact solutions for static wormholes supported by such energy.

Findings

Phantom energy can support static wormholes in inhomogeneous spacetimes.

The size of the phantom energy region is limited by the equation-of-state parameter w.

The maximal size of the energy distribution depends on w and has an upper bound.

Abstract

We extend the notion of phantom energy--which is generally accepted for homogeneously distributed matter with $w<-1$ in the universe--on inhomogeneous spherically symmetric spacetime configurations. A spherically symmetric distribution of phantom energy is shown to be able to support the existence of static wormholes. We find an exact solution describing a static spherically symmetric wormhole with phantom energy and show that a spatial distribution of the phantom energy is mainly restricted by the vicinity of the wormhole's throat. The maximal size of the spherical region, surrounding the throat and containing the most part of the phantom energy, depends on the equation-of-state parameter $w$ and cannot exceed some upper limit.