English

Physical and Stable Closed Timelike Curves

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2015-06-11 v2

Abstract

We construct a class of closed timelike curves (CTCs) using a compactified extra dimension uu. A nonzero metric element gtu(u)g_{tu}(u) enables particles to travel backwards in global time tt. The compactified dimension guarantees that the geodesic curve closes in uu. The effective 2D (tt and uu) nature of the metric ensures that spacetime is flat, therein satisfying all the classical stability conditions as expressed by the energy conditions. Finally, stationarity of the metric guarantees that a particle's energy is conserved. The pathologies that plague many hypothesized metrics admitting CTCs, e.g. an infinite cylinder of matter, a negative energy-distribution, particle acceleration/blue-shifting along the CTC, do not occur within our metric class.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1209.3107,
  title  = {Physical and Stable Closed Timelike Curves},
  author = {Chiu Man Ho and Thomas J. Weiler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.3107},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

7 pages, 2 figures, v2: version to appear in MPLA

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:04:53.384Z