A general class of braneworld wormholes

TL;DR

This paper explores a broad class of braneworld wormholes within five-dimensional brane cosmology, demonstrating that bulk effects can induce conditions necessary for traversable wormholes without violating energy conditions on the brane.

Contribution

It introduces a general class of braneworld wormholes with non-zero Ricci scalar and analyzes how bulk effects influence energy conditions, providing a natural framework for traversable wormholes.

Findings

Bulk effects can induce NEC violation on the brane.

Wormholes can exist with NEC-satisfying stress energy tensor on the brane.

Nonlocal Weyl curvature effects facilitate traversable wormholes.

Abstract

The brane cosmology scenario is based on the idea that our Universe is a 3-brane embedded in a five-dimensional bulk. In this work, a general class of braneworld wormholes is explored with $R\neq 0$, where $R$ is the four dimensional Ricci scalar, and specific solutions are further analyzed. A fundamental ingredient of traversable wormholes is the violation of the null energy condition (NEC). However, it is the effective total stress energy tensor that violates the latter, and in this work, the stress energy tensor confined on the brane, threading the wormhole, is imposed to satisfy the NEC. It is also shown that in addition to the local high-energy bulk effects, nonlocal corrections from the Weyl curvature in the bulk may induce a NEC violating signature on the brane. Thus, braneworld gravity seems to provide a natural scenario for the existence of traversable wormholes.