General relativistic Poynting-Robertson effect to diagnose wormholes existence: Static and spherically symmetric case

Abstract

We derive the equations of motion of a test particle in the equatorial plane around a static and spherically symmetric wormhole influenced by a radiation field including the general relativistic Poynting-Robertson effect. From the analysis of this dynamical system, we develop a diagnostic to distinguish a black hole from a wormhole, which can be timely supported by several and different observational data. This procedure is based on the possibility of having some wormhole metrics, which smoothly connect to the Schwarzschild metric in a small transition surface layer very close to the black hole event horizon. To detect such a metric-change, we analyse the emission proprieties from the critical hypersurface (stable region where radiation and gravitational fields balance) together with those from an accretion disk in the Schwarzschild spacetime toward a distant observer. Indeed, if the observational data are well fitted within such model, it immediately implies the existence of a black hole; while in case of strong departures from such description it means that a wormhole could be present. Finally, we discuss our results and draw the conclusions.