A note on wormholes in slightly modified gravitational theories

Abstract

Wormholes that meet the flare-out condition violate the weak energy condition in classical general relativity. The purpose of this note is to show that even a slight modification of the gravitational theory could, under certain conditions, avoid this violation for matter threading the wormhole. The first part discusses some general criteria based on the field equations, while the second part assumes a specific equation of state describing normal matter, together with a particular type of shape function. The analysis is confined to wormholes with zero tidal forces.