Null Raychaudhuri Equation and the Impossibility of Traversable Wormholes in Unimodular Gravity

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Authors: Erick Pastén, Marco Bosquez, Norman Cruz
Cited by: 0

Abstract

We formulate the traversability of wormhole throats as a local and covariant null defocusing condition derived from the Raychaudhuri equation. Since unimodular gravity preserves the local geometric structure of spacetime, the null focusing properties of geodesic congruences are unchanged with respect to general relativity. We show that any genuinely traversable wormhole in unimodular gravity necessarily violates the null energy condition, establishing a local no--go theorem for wormholes supported by ordinary matter in this framework.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Cosmology and Gravitation Theories Relativity and Gravitational Theory Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
31 January 2026
Document type
Preprint