Speaker
Description
Wormholes are objects frequently used in science fiction to traverse great distances on human time scales, taking advantage of these strange geometries to connect regions that appear to be far apart. Surprisingly, these objects are solutions to the field equations of General Relativity if additional fields are included. In particular, the Ellis–Bronnikov solution makes use of a phantom scalar field. But, can they exist in nature?
Recent advances in the field of gravitational waves have opened a new observational window to the universe, turning compact objects into ideal laboratories for testing the theory of gravity. The “ringdown” phase is characterized by certain resonance frequencies and characteristic decay times, known as quasinormal modes. This spectrum of modes can be studied using perturbative methods and allows us to analyze stability, where we find that Ellis–Bronnikov wormholes are unstable under radial perturbations. We propose electrically charging these objects to reduce the instabilities and obtain configurations with large lifetimes.