Traversable wormhole in Einstein 3-form theory with self-interacting potential

Abstract

We numerically construct a symmetric wormhole solution in pure Einstein gravity supported by a massive 3-form field with a potential that contains a quartic self-interaction term. The wormhole spacetimes have only a single throat and they are everywhere regular and asymptotically flat. Furthermore, their mass and throat circumference increase almost linearly as the coefficient of the quartic self-interaction term Λ increases. The amount of violation of the null energy condition (NEC) is proportional to the magnitude of 3-form, thus the NEC is less violated as Λ increases, since the magnitude of 3-form decreases with Λ. In addition, we investigate the geodesics of particles moving around the wormhole. The unstable photon orbit is located at the throat. We also find that the wormhole can cast a shadow whose apparent size is smaller than that cast by the Schwarzschild black hole, but reduces to it when Λ acquires a large value. The behavior of the innermost stable circular orbit around this wormhole is also discussed. The results of this paper hint toward the possibility that the 3-form wormholes could be potential black hole mimickers, as long as Λ is sufficiently large, precisely when NEC is weakly violated.