• Accepted Paper

Self-force on a static scalar charge in traversable wormholes

Jerome P. Mecca and Ian Vega

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 28 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/6qk8-9mhc

Abstract

The self-force acting on a charged particle is sensitive to the global structure of curved spacetime and can serve as a probe of geometry beyond local curvature. We compute the static scalar self-force on a point charge in the two-parameter family of spherically symmetric wormholes introduced by Konoplya and Zhidenko, members of the broader Morris–Thorne class of traversable wormholes. Using mode-sum regularization, we analyze its dependence on the shape exponent q, which controls the throat geometry, and the redshift parameter p, which determines the redshift function and tidal strength. We find that the self-force is generally not unidirectional: it can change sign with radial distance from the throat, with up to two distinct zero crossings depending on (p,q). This sign-switching behavior can be attributed to the competition between the wormhole’s short-range tidal gradients and the long-range effect of its topological flaring out. In the ultrastatic case (p=0) where tidal forces vanish, the self-force remains strictly unidirectional. Furthermore, we provide a systematic characterization of how both the direction and large-distance falloff depend on the wormhole parameters. For sufficiently large p, the force can decay at a slower rate than the canonical ∼r−3 behavior typical of isolated-body spacetimes, with stronger flaring (more negative q) leading to more rapid decay. In the combined limit p→∞ and q→−∞, the asymptotic falloff approaches that of the static scalar self-force in the Ellis wormhole.

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