Is dark energy necessary for the sustainability of traversable wormholes?

Abstract

In the standard approach to studying wormhole geometry, the presence of dark energy is unavoidable to ensure traversability. The dark energy provides the negative gravity effect to keep the throat open. The question we analyse is whether the same can be achieved without dark energy. It turns out that if we couple the trace of energy-momentum with the standard Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian and utilise a sppecific equation of state then dark energy may be obviated. The Casimir stress energy is known to result in the violation of the null energy condition (NEC) on the energy momentum tensor. This phenomenon makes such an equation of state (EoS) an ideal candidate to generate traversable wormhole (WH) geometries. The laboratory proven phenomenon provides a mechanism to sustain an open WH throat without having to appeal to dark energy. We generate two classes of WH solutions with this in $f(R,T)$ gravity theory, where $R$ represents the Ricci scalar and $T$ is the trace of the stress-energy tensor. For the background geometry we choose a static and spherically symmetric metric, and derive the field equations for exact WH solutions. For the specific choice of the Casimir EoS relating the energy-momentum tensor components [ Kar and Sahdev: Phys. Rev D {\bf 52} 2030 (1995)] and different choices for redshift functions, we determine the WH geometry completely. The obtained WH solutions violate the NECs and all qualitative constraints demanded of physically realisable WHs are satisfied. This is demonstrated via graphical plots for a suitably chosen range of values of the $f(R,T)$ coupling parameter. Furthermore, our study involved an investigation into the repulsive effect of gravity, which revealed that its presence leads to a negative deflection angle for photons traveling along null geodesics.