On the geometrical and dynamical distinction between unimodular and general relativistic wormholes
- 1Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
- 2Universidad de Santiago de Chile
- 3Universidad del Bío-Bío
Abstract
We characterize traversable wormholes in Unimodular Gravity (UG) and investigate what distinguishes them from their General Relativistic (GR) counterparts. For a class of static and spherically symmetric solutions, we analyze their embedding and timelike geodesics, showing that the geodesic structure is entirely determined by the metric and is therefore identical in both theories. To identify the physical origin of their differences, we compare the source sectors required to sustain the same wormhole geometry. We find that preserving a fixed UG geometry while imposing energy-momentum conservation requires restricting the equation of state, whereas relaxing this condition introduces an effective inhomogeneous vacuum contribution. We further show that the degree of exoticity is preserved even when energy-momentum is not conserved, while departures from the GR sector are encoded in an effective inhomogeneous vacuum structure whose asymptotic behavior resembles that of a cosmological constant. Our results reinforce that UG gravity is geometrically equivalent to GR, while its distinctive features emerge in the dynamical interpretation of the source sector. More generally, our analysis illustrates that different gravitational theories may give rise to identical spacetime geometries while requiring different sources to sustain them.
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BibTeX
@article{bosquez2026geometrical,
title = {{On the geometrical and dynamical distinction between unimodular and general relativistic wormholes}},
author = {Marco Bosquez and Erick Pastén and Mauricio Cataldo and Norman Cruz},
journal = {The European Physical Journal C},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1140/epjc/s10052-026-16472-8},
url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-026-16472-8},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - On the geometrical and dynamical distinction between unimodular and general relativistic wormholes
AU - Marco Bosquez
AU - Erick Pastén
AU - Mauricio Cataldo
AU - Norman Cruz
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/19
JO - The European Physical Journal C
DO - 10.1140/epjc/s10052-026-16472-8
UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-026-16472-8
AB - We characterize traversable wormholes in Unimodular Gravity (UG) and investigate what distinguishes them from their General Relativistic (GR) counterparts. For a class of static and spherically symmetric solutions, we analyze their embedding and timelike geodesics, showing that the geodesic structure is entirely determined by the metric and is therefore identical in both theories. To identify the physical origin of their differences, we compare the source sectors required to sustain the same wormhole geometry. We find that preserving a fixed UG geometry while imposing energy-momentum conservation requires restricting the equation of state, whereas relaxing this condition introduces an effective inhomogeneous vacuum contribution. We further show that the degree of exoticity is preserved even when energy-momentum is not conserved, while departures from the GR sector are encoded in an effective inhomogeneous vacuum structure whose asymptotic behavior resembles that of a cosmological constant. Our results reinforce that UG gravity is geometrically equivalent to GR, while its distinctive features emerge in the dynamical interpretation of the source sector. More generally, our analysis illustrates that different gravitational theories may give rise to identical spacetime geometries while requiring different sources to sustain them.
SN - 1434-6044
SN - 1434-6052
ER -