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Wake Forest Physics
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WFU Physics Colloquium
ΣΠ&Sigma (Physics Honors Society) Ceremony
Introduction of new physics majors
Special recognition of graduating students
Presentation of student awards
Honors Thesis Presentation
TIME: Thurs. May 1, 2008 at 4:00 PM
PLACE: George P. Williams, Jr. Lecture Hall, (Olin 101)
Honors Thesis Presentation
Sarah Kylap
Numerical Computation of the Stress-Energy Tensor in the Neighborhood of a Wormhole due to Fermionic FieldsOne interesting potential solution to the semiclassical gravity equation is a wormhole. The calculation of the stress-energy tensor for a wormhole is significant and relevant to the study of wormholes because it gives important information about the structure and energy density of spacetime. In this research, we automated the calculation of the stress-energy tensor for a static, spherically symmetric wormhole due to vacuum fluctuations of massless quantum Dirac fields with spin-1/2. We calculated the stress-energy tensor for three different possible wormhole metrics. Given the stress-energy for a particular metric, Einstein's field equation can be used to obtain the Einstein tensor and thus, the backreaction on the metric. Ultimately, we would like to find a self-consistent wormhole solution, where the stress-energy tensor from the wormhole is precisely that needed to create the wormhole. Thus far, no such solution has been found and the main barrier to finding such a solution has been the enormous amount of time needed to calculate the stress-energy from a particular solution. Automating this process, as we have done, will aid in the search for a self-consistent wormhole solution. |