English

Black-bounce to traversable wormhole

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2019-03-01 v3

Abstract

So-called "regular black holes" are a topic currently of considerable interest in the general relativity and astrophysics communities. Herein we investigate a particularly interesting regular black hole spacetime described by the line element ds2=(12mr2+a2)dt2+dr212mr2+a2+(r2+a2)(dθ2+sin2θ  dϕ2). ds^{2}=-\left(1-\frac{2m}{\sqrt{r^{2}+a^{2}}}\right)dt^{2}+\frac{dr^{2}}{1-\frac{2m}{\sqrt{r^{2}+a^{2}}}} +\left(r^{2}+a^{2}\right)\left(d\theta^{2}+\sin^{2}\theta \;d\phi^{2}\right). This spacetime neatly interpolates between the standard Schwarzschild black hole and the Morris-Thorne traversable wormhole; at intermediate stages passing through a black-bounce (into a future incarnation of the universe), an extremal null-bounce (into a future incarnation of the universe), and a traversable wormhole. As long as the parameter aa is non-zero the geometry is everywhere regular, so one has a somewhat unusual form of "regular black hole", where the "origin" r=0r=0 can be either spacelike, null, or timelike. Thus this spacetime generalizes and broadens the class of "regular black holes" beyond those usually considered.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.07114,
  title  = {Black-bounce to traversable wormhole},
  author = {Alex Simpson and Matt Visser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.07114},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

22 pages, 5 figures. One typo fixed; one reference added (for v2). 5 references added, explanation on the null energy condition rewritten for clarity (for v3)

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:45:25.943Z