Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We investigate the gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric degenerate wormhole in vacuum, treated as a purely geometric object that is free of matter yet carries a gravitational mass parameter [Formula: see text]. Building on the polynomial, [Formula: see text]-regularized form of the Einstein equations, we use the Klinkhamer metric as a concrete example of such a matter-free field source and recall that it reproduces the Schwarzschild exterior on each sheet while remaining an exact vacuum solution, including at the degenerate throat. We then formulate an extended equivalence principle which postulates that this geometric mass plays the role of both gravitational and inertial mass for the wormhole throat, viewed as the single dynamical degree of freedom. Applying this extended principle reduces the field-theoretic problem of radial wormhole dynamics to the motion of a massive test particle in a Schwarzschild spacetime with mass [Formula: see text], for which the collapse trajectory can be obtained analytically. We prove that any bound state of a traversable Klinkhamer wormhole inevitably collapses into a non-traversable Einstein–Rosen wormhole, and we estimate the collapse time, showing that the traversable phase, although non-stationary, can be a long-lived matter-free configuration.
Author: Juri Dimaschko
Institution: Technical University of Applied Sciences Lübeck
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7160180024