Nuclear Physics B (Oct 2024)
Revisiting Weak Energy Condition and wormholes in Brans-Dicke gravity
Abstract
It is known that the formation of a wormhole typically involves a violation of the Weak Energy Condition (WEC), but the reverse is not necessarily true. In the context of Brans-Dicke gravity, the generalized Campanelli-Lousto solution, which we shall unveil in this paper, demonstrates a WEC violation that coincides with the appearance of unbounded sheets of spacetime within the region where 0rs is thus only an indirect consequence of the WEC violation. Whereas the two regions, 0rs, in general are disconnected by physical singularities at r=rs, they are both part of the same mathematical solution, and their behavior can provide insights into the WEC, which is a mathematical property of the solution. Furthermore, we utilize the generalized Campanelli-Lousto solution to construct a Kruskal-Szekeres diagram, which exhibits a “gulf” sandwiched between the four quadrants in the diagram, a novel feature in Brans-Dicke gravity. Overall, our findings shed new light onto a complex interplay between the WEC and wormholes in the Brans-Dicke theory.