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Free keywords:
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc, Astrophysics, High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, astro-ph.HE
Abstract:
Despite originating in science fiction, warp drives have a concrete
description in general relativity, with Alcubierre first proposing a spacetime
metric that supported faster-than-light travel. Whilst there are numerous
practical barriers to their implementation in real life, including a
requirement for negative energy, computationally, one can simulate their
evolution in time given an equation of state describing the matter. In this
work, we study the signatures arising from a warp drive "containment failure",
assuming a stiff equation of state for the fluid. We compute the emitted
gravitational-wave signal and track the energy fluxes of the fluid. Apart from
its rather speculative application to the search for extraterrestrial life in
gravitational-wave detector data, this work is interesting as a study of the
dynamical evolution and stability of spacetimes that violate the null energy
condition. Our work highlights the importance of exploring strange new
spacetimes, to (boldly) simulate what no one has seen before.
