Impossibility of superluminal travel in Lorentz violating theories

Antonin Coutant, Stefano Finazzi, Stefano Liberati, and Renaud Parentani
Phys. Rev. D 85, 064020 – Published 16 March 2012

Abstract

Warp drives are space-times allowing for superluminal travel. However, they are quantum mechanically unstable because they produce a Hawking-like radiation which is blue shifted at their front wall without any bound. We reexamine this instability when local Lorentz invariance is violated at ultrahigh energy by dispersion, as in some theories of quantum gravity. Interestingly, even though the ultraviolet divergence is now regulated, warp drives are still unstable. Moreover the type of instability is different whether one uses a subluminal or a superluminal dispersion relation. In the first case, a black-hole laser yields an exponential amplification of the emitted flux whereas, in the second, infrared effects produce a linear growth of that flux. These results suggest that chronology could still be protected when violating Lorentz invariance.

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  • Received 18 November 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.85.064020

© 2012 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Antonin Coutant1,*, Stefano Finazzi2,†, Stefano Liberati3,‡, and Renaud Parentani1,§

  • 1Laboratoire de Physique Théorique, CNRS UMR 8627, Bât. 210, Université Paris-Sud 11, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
  • 2INO-CNR BEC Center and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trento, via Sommarive 14, 38123 Povo-Trento, Italy
  • 3SISSA, Via Bonomea 265, 34136, Trieste, Italy and INFN, Sezione di Trieste

  • *antonin.coutant@th.u-psud.fr
  • finazzi@science.unitn.it
  • liberati@sissa.it
  • §renaud.parentani@th.u-psud.fr

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Vol. 85, Iss. 6 — 15 March 2012

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