English

Electromagnetic, gravitational wave, and static gravitational transmission through throat spacetimes: a constraint-wave asymmetry

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-04-24 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We compute the transmission properties of electromagnetic (EM), gravitational wave (GW), and static gravitational perturbations through geometric throats in spherically symmetric spacetimes. On the ultrastatic Ellis-Bronnikov background, decomposition of the four-dimensional Maxwell equations into vector spherical harmonics yields an effective Schr\"odinger problem with centrifugal barrier V(EM)=(+1)/(σ2+r02)V_\ell^{(\mathrm{EM})}=\ell(\ell+1)/(\sigma^2+r_0^2) peaked at the throat. For the lowest physical EM mode (=1\ell=1), frequencies below the barrier-top frequency ωmax=2/r0\omega_{\max}=\sqrt{2}/r_0 are strongly suppressed by sub-barrier tunnelling. Gravitational wave perturbations (2\ell\ge 2) see a qualitatively similar barrier and are likewise strongly suppressed below their respective barrier-top frequencies. By contrast, the static gravitational monopole (=0\ell=0), governed by the linearised Einstein equations on the same background, satisfies the source-free conservation law (a2Φ)=0(a^2\Phi')'=0 with no potential barrier, yielding the exact solution Φarctan(σ/r0)\Phi\propto\arctan(\sigma/r_0). We extend these results to a one-parameter family of throat geometries with varying profile shapes, and to a reflected-Schwarzschild (Damour-Solodukhin-type) wormhole, demonstrating that the qualitative asymmetry\emdash strong sub-barrier suppression for all propagating radiation (1\ell\ge 1) versus polynomial attenuation for the static monopole (=0\ell=0)\emdash is universal for static, spherically symmetric throats. Numerov integration, WKB estimates, and exact analytical solutions are compared throughout. The results establish a structural constraint-wave asymmetry arising from the multipole decomposition of the field equations, independent of the matter content sourcing the geometry, on a fixed background.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.14238,
  title  = {Electromagnetic, gravitational wave, and static gravitational transmission through throat spacetimes: a constraint-wave asymmetry},
  author = {Jeff Riley},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.14238},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

18 pages, 5 figures