Warp drives are space-times allowing for superluminal travel. However, they are quantum mechanically unstable because they produce a Hawking-like radiation which is blue shifted at their front wall without any bound. We reexamine this instability when local Lorentz invariance is violated at ultrahigh energy by dispersion, as in some theories of quantum gravity. Interestingly, even though the ultraviolet divergence is now regulated, warp drives are still unstable. Moreover the type of instability is different whether one uses a subluminal or a superluminal dispersion relation. In the first case, a black-hole laser yields an exponential amplification of the emitted flux whereas, in the second, infrared effects produce a linear growth of that flux. These results suggest that chronology could still be protected when violating Lorentz invariance.

Impossibility of superluminal travel in Lorentz violating theories / Coutant, A; Finazzi, S; Liberati, Stefano; Parentanti, R.. - In: PHYSICAL REVIEW D, PARTICLES, FIELDS, GRAVITATION, AND COSMOLOGY. - ISSN 1550-7998. - 85:6(2012), pp. 064020.1-064020.5. [10.1103/PhysRevD.85.064020]

Impossibility of superluminal travel in Lorentz violating theories

Liberati, Stefano;
2012-01-01

Abstract

Warp drives are space-times allowing for superluminal travel. However, they are quantum mechanically unstable because they produce a Hawking-like radiation which is blue shifted at their front wall without any bound. We reexamine this instability when local Lorentz invariance is violated at ultrahigh energy by dispersion, as in some theories of quantum gravity. Interestingly, even though the ultraviolet divergence is now regulated, warp drives are still unstable. Moreover the type of instability is different whether one uses a subluminal or a superluminal dispersion relation. In the first case, a black-hole laser yields an exponential amplification of the emitted flux whereas, in the second, infrared effects produce a linear growth of that flux. These results suggest that chronology could still be protected when violating Lorentz invariance.
2012
85
6
1
5
064020
https://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4356
Coutant, A; Finazzi, S; Liberati, Stefano; Parentanti, R.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11767/14986
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