Assume I have a solid grasp of undergraduate physics. From what I\'ve read the w

Question

Assume I have a solid grasp of undergraduate physics. From what I've read the warp field interferometer is supposed to be a sort of Michelson interferometer, except instead of adjusting the displacement of one mirror, you have a toroidal capacitor that... somehow expands space?

I am talking about the work of Harold White at NASA. He's been apparently working on a way to implement an Alcubierre drive by generating a negative energy density with a torus of positive energy (but I don't know how this would work).

Explanation / Answer

The mentioned NASA paper have the answers, but it's too brief and may be difficult to follow. I recommend to read White' earlier paper It has a nice explanation along with mathematics.In short it applies the Chung-Freese metric to the Alcubierre solution. The result is that the toroidal positive energy density could yield a spherical negative pressure region. So, it requires no negative energy or exotic matter. But these results are highly speculative and should be proven yet.

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