In one minute

Shaun Fell and Lavinia Heisenberg address the long-standing view that superluminal warp solitons need negative energy densities. By decomposing the defining variables and the Eulerian energy, they find a geometric interpretation of that energy. With it, generating solitons that respect positive energy becomes relatively simple, and they present a superluminal soliton with positive semi-definite energy. Numerical examples need total energy four orders of magnitude below a solar mass and are built entirely from positive energy densities. This opens new doors to realistic warp fields for laboratory study and future crewed interstellar travel. The next steps are a purpose-built solver for the remaining nonlinear equation and other decompositions of the shift vector to uncover further hidden structure.

Positive Energy Warp Drive from Hidden Geometric Structures