Item Details

title

Quantum Effects of the Massless Spin One-Half Field in Static Spherically Symmetric Black Hole and Wormhole Spacetimes

author

Hirsch, William

abstract

The full renormalized stress-energy tensor for the massless spin one-half field is numerically computed on and outside the event horizon of an extreme Reissner-Nordstrom black hole and on and outside the throat of three static spherically symmetric Lorentzian wormhole spacetimes. The field and all spacetimes studied are in a zero temperature vacuum state. We treat the field quantum mechanically on a classical background spacetime governed by general relativity. The full stress-energy tensor is found to be finite and regular for all spacetimes. We make comparisons between the numerical calculation and the analytic approximation found by Groves {\it et~al.} for the full stress-energy tensor. We find that the approximation is very poor in most cases, even getting the wrong sign for many components. For the extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole, divergences predicted by the analytic approximation of are shown to be nonexistent. Lastly, the results for the full stress-energy tensors for wormholes are analyzed in terms of an arbitrary renormalization parameter to see if the ``exotic" energy condition needed to keep such an object from collapsing are met. No wormhole geometry studied is found to be a self-consistent solution when quantum fluctuations of the spin one-half field are considered. This is in contrast to the results found using the analytic approximation for the massless spin-one half field which predicts that one of the wormholes might have a self-consistent solution, since the stress-energy tensor found satisfies the exotic energy condition.

subject

wormhole

black hole

quantum gravity

semi-classical gravity

stress-energy

exotic energy

spherically symmetric

fermions

contributor

Carlson, Eric (committee chair)

Cook, Greg (committee member)

Anderson, Paul (committee member)

Williams, Richard (committee member)

Robinson, Stephen (committee member)

date

2009-08-06T15:56:23Z (accessioned)

2010-06-18T19:00:06Z (accessioned)

2009-08-06T15:56:23Z (available)

2010-06-18T19:00:06Z (available)

2009-08-06T15:56:23Z (issued)

degree

Physics (discipline)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/14923 (uri)

language

en_US (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

rights

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide. (accessRights)

type

Dissertation