Semiclassical instability of warp drives

Warp drives, at least theoretically, provide a way to travel at superluminal speeds. However, even if one succeeded in providing the necessary exotic matter to construct them, it would still be necessary to check whether they would survive to the switching on of quantum effects. In this contribution we will report on the behaviour of the Renormalized Stress-Energy Tensor (RSET) in the spacetimes associated with superluminal warp drives. We find that the RSET will exponentially grow in time close to the front wall of the superluminal bubble, hence strongly supporting the conclusion that the warp-drive geometries are unstable against semiclassical back-reaction.