http://www.earthtech.org/publications/davis_STAIF_conference_1.pdf

Experimental Concepts for Generating Negative Energy in
the Laboratory
E. W. Davis and H. E. Puthoff
Inst. for Advanced Studies at Austin, 4030 W. Braker Ln., Ste. 300, Austin, TX 78759, USA
512-342-2187, ewdavis@earthtech.org
Abstract. Implementation of faster-than-light (FTL) interstellar travel via traversable wormholes, warp drives, or other
spacetime modification schemes generally requires the engineering of spacetime into very specialized local geometries.
The analysis of these via Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (GTR) field equations plus the resultant equations of state
demonstrate that such geometries require the use of “exotic” matter in order to induce the requisite FTL spacetime
modification. Exotic matter is generally defined by GTR physics to be matter that possesses (renormalized) negative
energy density, and this is a very misunderstood and misapplied term by the non-GTR community. We clear up this
misconception by defining what negative energy is, where it can be found in nature, and we also review the experimental
concepts that have been proposed to generate negative energy in the laboratory.
Keywords: Warp Drive, Traversable Wormholes, General Relativity, Squeezed Quantum States, Electromagnetic Field.
PACS: 04.20.Cv, 04.20.Gz, 04.62.+v, 42.50.Dv.
INTRODUCTION
It was nearly two decades ago when science fiction media (TV, film and novels) began to adopt traversable
wormholes, and more recently “stargates,” for interstellar travel schemes that allowed their heroes and heroines to
travel throughout our galaxy. Little did anyone outside of relativity physics know but that in 1985 physicists M.
Morris and K. Thorne at CalTech had in fact discovered the principle of traversable wormholes right out of
Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (GTR, published in 1915). Morris and Thorne (1988) and Morris, Thorne
and Yurtsever (1988) did this as an academic exercise, and in the form of problems for a physics final exam, at the
request of Carl Sagan who had then completed the draft of his novel Contact. Sagan wanted to follow the genre of
what we call science “faction,” whereby the story’s plot would rely on cutting-edge physics concepts to make it
more realistic and technically plausible. This little exercise ended up becoming one of the greatest cottage industries
in general relativity research – the study of traversable wormholes and time machines. Wormholes are hyperspace
tunnels through spacetime connecting together either remote regions within our universe or two different universes;
they even connect together different dimensions and different times. Space travelers would enter one side of the
tunnel and exit out the other, passing through the throat along the way. The travelers would move at o€ ? c (c = speed
of light) through the wormhole and therefore not violate Special Relativity, but external observers would view the
travelers as having traversed multi-light year distances through space at FTL speed. A “stargate” was shown to be a
very simple special class of traversable wormhole solutions to the Einstein GTR field equations (Visser, 1995;
Davis, 2004).
This development was later followed by M. Alcubierre’s discovery in 1994 of the “warp drive” spacetime metric,
which was another solution to Einstein’s GTR field equations. Alcubierre (1994) derived a metric motivated by
cosmological inflation that would allow arbitrarily short travel times between two distant points in space. The
behavior of the warp drive metric provides for the simultaneous expansion of space behind the spacecraft and a
corresponding contraction of space in front of the spacecraft. The warp drive spacecraft would appear to be “surfing
on a wave” of spacetime geometry. A spacecraft can be made to exhibit an arbitrarily large apparent FTL speed (>>
c) as viewed by external observers, but its moving local rest frame never travels outside of its local comoving light
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