Wormhole solutions in $f(R,L_m)$ gravity

Abstract

In this work, we intend to explore wormhole geometries in the framework of $f(R,L_m)$ gravity. We derive the field equations for the generic $f(R,L_m)$ function by assuming the static and spherically symmetric Morris-Thorne wormhole metric. Then we consider two non-linear $f(R,L_m)$ model, specifically, $f(R,L_m)=\frac{R}{2}+L_m^\alpha$ and $f(R,L_m)=\frac{R}{2}+(1+\lambda R)L_m$, where $\alpha$ and $\lambda$ are free model parameters. We obtain the wormhole solutions by assuming three cases, namely, a linear barotropic EoS, anisotropic EoS, and isotropic EoS corresponding to model I. We observe that for both barotropic and anisotropic cases, the corresponding wormhole solutions obey the flaring-out condition under asymptotic background, while for the isotropic case, the shape function does not follow the flatness condition. Also, we find that the null energy condition exhibits negative behavior in the vicinity of the throat. Further, we consider two different shape functions to investigate the behavior of model II. We find some constraints on the model parameter for which the violation of the null energy condition exhibits. Finally, we employ the volume integral quantifier to calculate the amount of exotic matter required near the wormhole throat for both models. We conclude that the modification of standard GR can efficiently minimize the use of exotic matter and provide stable traversable wormhole solutions.