Black Holes, Warp Drives, and Energy Conditions

Abstract: Following the work of H. Ellis, we study warp drives in the gravitational field of a Schwarzschild black hole. We find that as long as the warp drive crosses the black hole horizon at a subluminal speed, the horizon would be effectively absent inside the warp bubble. Moreover, we discover that the black hole's gravitational field can alleviate the violations of the weak energy condition (WEC) and the null energy condition (NEC) and therefore decrease the amount of negative energy required to sustain a warp drive, which may be instrumental for creating microscopic warp drives in lab experiments. We also consider the thermodynamics of a warp bubble interacting with a black hole and point out some paradoxes that may indicate a gap in our understanding of them from the thermodynamic point of view.