Linearized warp drive and the energy conditions

“Warp drive” spacetimes are useful as “gedanken-experiments” and as a theoretician’s probe of the foundations of general relativity. Applying linearized gravity to the weak-field warp drive, i.e., for non-relativistic warp-bubble velocities, we find that the occurrence of energy condition violations in this class of spacetimes is generic to the form of the geometry under consideration and is not simply a side-effect of the “superluminal” properties. Using the linearized construction it is now possible to compare the warp field energy with the massenergy of the spaceship, and applying the “volume integral quantifier”, extremely stringent conditions on the warp drive spacetime are found.