English

Zero mass limit of Kerr spacetime is a wormhole

High Energy Physics - Theory 2017-08-02 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We show that, contrary to what is usually claimed in the literature, the zero mass limit of Kerr spacetime is not flat Minkowski space but a spacetime whose geometry is only locally flat. This limiting spacetime, as the Kerr spacetime itself, contains two asymptotic regions and hence cannot be topologically trivial. It also contains a curvature singularity, because the power-law singularity of the Weyl tensor vanishes in the limit but there remains a distributional contribution of the Ricci tensor. This spacetime can be interpreted as a wormhole sourced by a negative tension ring. We also extend the discussion to similarly interpret the zero mass limit of the Kerr-(anti)-de Sitter spacetime.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1705.07787,
  title  = {Zero mass limit of Kerr spacetime is a wormhole},
  author = {Gary W. Gibbons and Mikhail S. Volkov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.07787},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

14 pages, 4 figures, references added