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Quantum effects in the Alcubierre warp drive spacetime

William A. Hiscock
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Abstract

The expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of a free conformally invariant scalar field is computed in a two-dimensional reduction of the Alcubierre ``warp drive'' spacetime. The stress-energy is found to diverge if the apparent velocity of the spaceship exceeds the speed of light. If such behavior occurs in four dimensions, then it appears implausible that ``warp drive'' behavior in a spacetime could be engineered, even by an arbitrarily advanced civilization.

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William A. Hiscock. 1997-07-10. Quantum effects in the Alcubierre warp drive spacetime. https://doi.org/10.1088/0264-9381%2F14%2F11%2F002

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