Generic warp drives violate the null energy condition

Abstract

Three very recent articles have claimed that it is possible to, at least in theory, either set up positive energy warp drives satisfying the weak energy condition (WEC), or at the very least, to minimize the WEC violations. These claims are at best incomplete, since the arguments presented only demonstrate the existence of one set of timelike observers, the co-moving Eulerian observers, who see "nice" physics. While these observers might see a positive energy density, the WEC requires all timelike observers to see positive energy density. Therefore, one should revisit this issue. A more careful analysis shows that the situation is actually much grimmer than advertised -- all physically reasonable warp drives will violate the null energy condition, and so also automatically violate the WEC, and both the strong and dominant energy conditions. While warp drives are certainly interesting examples of speculative physics, the violation of the energy conditions, at least within the framework of standard general relativity, is unavoidable. Even in modified gravity, physically reasonable warp drives will still violate the purely geometrical null convergence condition and the timelike convergence condition which, in turn, will place very strong constraints on any modified-gravity warp drive.