Searching for wormholes with gravitational wave scattering

Wormholes bridging distant places of the universe are well-known solutions of general relativity. In particular, traversable wormholes which allow interstellar traveling are also popular in science fiction. However, no hint of their existence has been found yet. In this work, we propose using the gr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2023-02
Main Authors: Shou-shan Bao, Hou, Shaoqi, Zhang, Hong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chirp
Gravitational waves
Mathematical analysis
Reflected waves
Relativity
Science fiction
Searching
Spherical waves
Telescopes
Time travel
Wave scattering
Waveforms
Wormholes
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Summary:Wormholes bridging distant places of the universe are well-known solutions of general relativity. In particular, traversable wormholes which allow interstellar traveling are also popular in science fiction. However, no hint of their existence has been found yet. In this work, we propose using the gravitational wave (GW) scattering off spherical wormholes to search for their existence. We carefully calculate the reflected and transmitted waveforms with time-independent scattering theory. Our results quantitatively show the echo signatures in the two universes on both sides of the wormhole. In a certain wormhole mass range, the transmitted wave has a unique isolated chirp without an inspiral waveform, and the reflected wave has the anti-chirp behavior, i.e., the missing of the chirping signal. We also calculate the searching range of the current and projected GW telescopes. Our method can be adapted to efficiently calculate the templates to search for wormholes.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2201.05866