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Surface temperature of an accretion disk around a wormhole Kerr mimicker

A. Karakonstantakis* and W. Kluźniak

  • *Contact author: karakonang@camk.edu.pl
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 043002 – Published 3 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/tlx8-5p56

Abstract

It has been suggested that spinning wormholes may mimic Kerr black holes in astronomical sources such as x-ray binaries and supermassive compact objects in centers of galaxies. With recent advances in instrumentation this could be tested if clear differences between the expected wormhole and black hole accretion properties were identified. We find that at a given circumferential radius the physical quantities relating to circular orbits in the equatorial plane are exactly the same for the spinning wormhole and a black hole of the same mass and angular momentum, if only the two spacetime metrics differ in the grr component alone. A Kerr-like wormhole is a perfect black hole mimicker in relation to the orbital properties in the equatorial plane. The angular velocity, specific energy, specific angular momentum, and Lense-Thirring precession rate are the same for a Kerr black hole and a Kerr-like wormhole in circular orbits of the same circumference. However, for a wormhole there are no orbits of radius less than that of its throat, and this yields an observable signature. We note that the surface area of a disk in the equatorial plane is different in the two spacetimes, and this allows a fairly direct method of measuring the grr component of the metric when a geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disk is present: the radiative flux is inversely proportional to the square root of grr. This results in a visibly suppressed blackbody disk temperature for traversable wormholes with a sufficiently wide throat, with the temperature decreasing monotonically (relative to the Kerr result) as the throat is approached.

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  48. This freedom of multiplying Eq. (a5) by any function of r makes the exact functional form of the effective potential a matter of convenience. The familiar effective potential of [47] is given by Vr=(ΣΔ)Vl,E.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 043002– Published 3 August, 2026
  • Received 30 December 2025
  • Accepted 9 June 2026
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