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The Smeared Null Energy Condition

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-04-20 v4

Abstract

We propose a new bound on the average null energy along a finite portion of a null geodesic. We believe our bound is valid on scales small compared to the radius of curvature in any quantum field theory that is consistently coupled to gravity. If correct, our bound implies that regions of negative energy density are never strongly gravitating, and that isolated regions of negative energy are forbidden.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.03808,
  title  = {The Smeared Null Energy Condition},
  author = {Ben Freivogel and Dimitrios Krommydas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.03808},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

28 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T02:56:51.925Z