AAWSAP DIRD, Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions, April 2010

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Although we know what dark energy does, we do not yet fully understand its
nature. We do not understand why it exists or how it is created; we simply
know it provides an ever-present force on spacetime, causing the universe to
expand. Indeed, recent high-precision experimental observations indicate dark
energy may be a cosmological vacuum energy (Reference 8-10). These
observations are based on the magnitudes of high-redshift supernova and
have been a source of high research activity of late owing to the unexpected
discovery that the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing (commonly
referred to as accelerated expansion).
One tantalizing aspect of dark energy is that if it were fully understood, and if
a technology were developed that could generate and harness the exotic
effects of dark energy on the fabric of space, then a warp drive would be one
step closer to technological reality. While a full understanding of the true
nature of dark energy may be many years away, it is entirely feasible that
experimental breakthroughs at the Large Hadron Collider or developments in
the field of M-theory could lead to a quantum leap in our understanding of this
unusual form of energy and perhaps help to direct technological innovations.
Our own research focuses on gaining an understanding of the physical origin
of dark energy. By exploring novel ideas at the forefront of theoretical physics,
one is able to propose a physically viable model incorporating some of the
cutting-edge ideas emerging from string theory and quantum field theory. This
leads to a deeper understanding of the possible origin of dark energy and
allows consideration of a mechanism that would allow a sufficiently advanced
technology to control the dark energy density in any region of space, and thus
the expansion of space. This work has clear implications for the advancement
of warp drive research.
This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews the more traditional
general relativistic warp drives, the energy required to create them, and the
physics required to understand them. Section 3 discusses the cosmological
constant, a term featured in Einstein's equation that regulates the contraction
and expansion of the spacetime. Section 4 introduces the Casimir energy,
which, under certain conditions, may be the phenomenon that physically
generates the cosmological constant. Section 5 discusses higher dimensions in
physics and their importance in the context of Casimir energy calculations.
Section 6 introduces the formulas that demonstrate that the Casimir energies
in higher dimensions may in fact be the dark energy that is responsible for the
accelerated expansion of the universe. Section 7 relates all the previous
concepts together and introduces the novel warp drive paradigm. Section 8
performs original calculations of the energy required to create a superluminal
warp drive. Finally, the paper speculates about the technological progress that
would be necessary to turn this model into a reality.
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