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ADM mass in warp drive spacetimes

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arxiv 2205.15950 v2 pith:NNJWYBBL submitted 2022-05-31 gr-qc

classification gr-qc
keywords warpmassbubblecarefullydrivespacetimeswhatenergy
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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What happens when a warp bubble has mass? This seemingly innocent question forces one to carefully formalize exactly what one means by a warp bubble, exactly what one means by having the warp bubble "move" with respect to the fixed stars, and forces one to more carefully examine the notion of mass in warp-drive spacetimes. This is the goal of the present article. In this process, we will see that often-made throw-away comments regarding "payloads" are even simpler than commonly assumed, while there are two further, distinct yet subtle ways in which a mass can appear in connection with a warp drive space-time: One, that the warp bubble (not its payload) has the mass; two, that the mass is a background feature in front of which the warp drive moves. For simplicity, we consider generic Nat\'ario warp drives with zero-vorticity flow field. The resulting spacetimes are sufficiently simple to allow an exact and fully explicit computation of all of the stress-energy components, and verify that (as expected) the null energy condition (NEC) is violated. Likewise the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions (WEC, SEC, DEC) are violated. Indeed, this confirms the community's folk wisdom, and recent (fully general, but implicit) results of the present authors which closed previous gaps in the argument. However, folk wisdom should be carefully and critically examined before being believed, and the present examples for general results will greatly aid physical intuition.

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Cited by 2 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Steering a warp drive without exotic matter

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    A positive-energy steerable warp drive is constructed by matching the Kinnersley photon rocket to a flat passenger worldtube, with acceleration controlled by Bondi mass loss obeying a closed-form law.

  2. Radiative Signatures from Warp Drives Traveling Through the Earth's Atmosphere

    gr-qc 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A relativistic Alcubierre-type warp bubble entering Earth's atmosphere would trigger a bright shock glow with luminosities from terawatts to exawatts, making such transits detectable.

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