Black holes and traversible wormholes: a synthesis

Abstract

A unified framework for black holes and traversible wormholes is described, where both are locally defined by outer trapping horizons, two-way traversible for wormholes and one-way traversible for black or white holes. In a two-dimensional dilaton gravity model, examples are given of: construction of wormholes from black holes; operation of wormholes for transport, including back-reaction; maintenance of an operating wormhole; and collapse of wormholes to black holes. In spherically symmetric Einstein gravity, several exotic matter models supporting wormhole solutions are proposed: ghost scalar fields, exotic fluids and pure ghost radiation.