Fundamental limitations on ‘warp drive’ spacetimes
Open accessAbstract
'Warp drive' spacetimes are useful as 'gedanken-experiments' that force us to confront the foundations of general relativity, and among other things, to precisely formulate the notion of 'superluminal' communication. After carefully formulating the Alcubierre and Natário warp drive spacetimes, and verifying their non-perturbative violation of the classical energy conditions, we consider a more modest question and apply linearized gravity to the weak-field warp drive, testing the energy conditions to first and second orders of the warp-bubble velocity, v . Since we take the warp-bubble velocity to be non-relativistic, v ≪ c , we are not primarily interested in the 'superluminal' features of the warp drive. Instead we focus on a secondary feature of the warp drive that has not previously been remarked upon—the warp drive (if it could be built) would be an example of a 'reaction-less drive'. For both the Alcubierre and Natário warp drives we find that the occurrence of significant energy condition violations is not just a high-speed effect, but that the violations persist even at arbitrarily low speeds. A particularly interesting feature of this construction is that it is now meaningful to think of placing a finite mass spaceship at the centre of the warp bubble, and then see how the energy in the warp field compares with the mass–energy of the spaceship. There is no hope of doing this in Alcubierre's original version of the warp field, since by definition the point at the centre of the warp bubble moves on a geodesic and is 'massless'. That is, in Alcubierre's original formalism and in the Natário formalism the spaceship is always treated as a test particle, while in the linearized theory we can treat the spaceship as a finite mass object. For both the Alcubierre and Natário warp drives we find that even at low speeds the net (negative) energy stored in the warp fields must be a significant fraction of the mass of the spaceship.
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“[18]), and the result is”
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The vacuum state of quantum gravity contains large virtual masses
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Alcubierre warp drive in spherical coordinates with some matter configurations
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Newtonian limits of warp drive spacetimes
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“s therein). The warp drive spacetime, first introduced in [Alc94], is an interesting example of a relativistic spacetime, sheding light on the nature and limits of General Relativity (see for instance [LV04] and references therein), but its interpretation as a gravitational field is somewhat unclear. It would therefore…”
BackgroundScalar-tensor theories and asymmetric resonant cavities
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The Mystical Formula and The Mystery of Khronos
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Detailed study of null and timelike geodesics in the Alcubierre warp spacetime
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“The corresponding Sachs vectors (34) give y[6] = y[9] = 0,y[7] = arsinh(− sin ξ), y[8] = arsinh(cos ξ),y[10] = y[11] = y[12] = 0, and y[13] = arsinh(−1).”
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Warp Drive: A New ApproachPreprint
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ADM mass in warp drive spacetimes
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“As a result, several studies have been conducted with the goal of reducing the dependence on this exotic matter [47, 48].”
Superluminal warp drive and dark energy
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Ray trajectories for Alcubierre spacetime
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“Even the subluminal regime is associated with negative energy densities [15].”
BackgroundMetrics with Zero and Almost-Zero Einstein Action in Quantum Gravity
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“[15] Francisco SN Lobo and Matt Visser.”
MethodExotic Material as Interactions Between Scalar Fields
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Warp Drive: A New ApproachPreprint
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Ray trajectories for Alcubierre spacetimePreprint
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Route one to quantum gravityPreprint
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Faster-Than-Light Space Warps, Status and Next Steps
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Superluminal warp drives are semiclassically unstable
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Obstacles from interstellar matters and distortion in warp drive superluminal travel scenario
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Galaxy travel via Alcubierre's warp drive
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STATIC AND DYNAMIC TRAVERSABLE WORMHOLES
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“The physical realizability of such a metric is uncertain due to the exotic matter required to produce it, which appears to be a generic feature of warp drive spacetimes [23].”
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“There are many known physical limitations of the Alcubierre spacetime [13, 14], with several debates regarding the violation of energy conditions [15].”
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On the wormhole-warp drive correspondence
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“Within the realm of existing theories we can argue that those characteristics might be the expression of a dynamical spacetime effect, analogous to that considered by Alcubierre [16] and others [17–19].”
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Semiclassical instability of warp drives
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A Closer Look at Natário’s Zero-Expansion Warp Drive
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Modification in Alcubierre Warp Drive Geometry to Preserve Positive Energy Density
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Black holes, warp drives, and energy conditions
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Zen and the Art of Space-Time Manufacturing
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Zen and the Art of Space-Time Manufacturing
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Tractor Beams, Pressor Beams and Stressor Beams in General Relativity
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“The physicist's view—that future space flight will inevitably require FTL travel —has long been advanced by Chinese scientists, including Song Jian, Lin Jin and me [14-16].”
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“There, it was noticed that to an observer within the warp-drive bubble, the 1While initially it was supposed that exotic matter was needed only for superluminal warp drives (v0 > c), it was later recognized [130, 129] that energy-conditions-violating matter is needed also for subluminal speeds.”
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Adm Mass in Warp Drive SpacetimesPreprint
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Self-citationKodama Time, Entropy Bounds, the Raychaudhuri Equation, and the Quantum Interest Conjecture
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Quantum effects in warp drives
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- Authors
- Lobo, F. S. N., & Visser, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Lisbon (PT)
- Victoria University of Wellington (NZ)
- Venue
- Classical and Quantum Gravity
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2004-11-26
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 24
- Pages
- 5871-5892
- ISSN
- 0264-9381 (ISSN-L)
- 1361-6382
- OpenAlex
- W2077412049
- Cited by
- 117
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 2.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Classical and Quantum Gravity (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- Royal Society Te Apārangi
- Marsden Fund
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Relativity and Gravitational Theory
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Nuclear and High Energy Physics › Black Holes and Theoretical Physics
- Keywords
- warp drive, Alcubierre metric, energy conditions, superluminal communication, linearized gravity, weak-field limit, warp bubble, negative energy
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