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The Return of the Singularities: Applications of the Smeared Null Energy Condition

by Ben Freivogel, Eleni-Alexandra Kontou, Dimitrios Krommydas

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Submission summary

Authors (as registered SciPost users): Eleni-Alexandra Kontou
Submission information
Preprint Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.11569v2  (pdf)
Date accepted: 2022-05-04
Date submitted: 2021-11-16 15:17
Submitted by: Kontou, Eleni-Alexandra
Submitted to: SciPost Physics
Ontological classification
Academic field: Physics
Specialties:
  • Gravitation, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
  • High-Energy Physics - Theory
  • Quantum Physics
Approach: Theoretical

Abstract

The classic singularity theorems of General Relativity rely on energy conditions that can be violated in semiclassical gravity. Here, we provide motivation for an energy condition obeyed by semiclassical gravity: the smeared null energy condition (SNEC), a proposed bound on the weighted average of the null energy along a finite portion of a null geodesic. We then prove a semiclassical singularity theorem using SNEC as an assumption. This theorem extends the Penrose theorem to semiclassical gravity. We also apply our bound to evaporating black holes and the traversable wormhole of Maldacena-Milekhin-Popov, and comment on the relationship of our results to other proposed semiclassical singularity theorems.

Published as SciPost Phys. 13, 001 (2022)


Reports on this Submission

Anonymous Report 2 on 2022-1-3 (Invited Report)

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The authors have addressed the points I raised in the previous report, and accordingly I recommend publication.

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Anonymous Report 1 on 2021-12-15 (Invited Report)

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The authors has significantly improved the paper. I recommend it for the publication.

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