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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The ability to prepare arrays with made to measure electronic properties has generated much recent activity. This was made possible by the development of synthetic methods for the preparation of, so called, quantum dots. For our purpose these dots act like designer atoms. The properties of individual dots can be designed by the choice of composition and size. Size is a particular variable we wish to emphasize. Quantum dots are aggregates of tens or hundreds of atoms (or molecules) and so are nanoscale building blocks. The size of the dots is however small enough so that, since the highest lying electron(s) are confined to the volume of the dot, the electronic energy levels are still discrete. For a chemist, it is convenient to think of the higher-most electrons of each dot as the valence electron of an atom.

These dots can self assemble into a planar array. For, e.g., Ag nanodots, the packing is hexagonal. The reason why adjacent dots in such an array may have an unequal charge distribution is related to their nano-scale size. Unlike the smaller ordinary atoms, a quantum dot does not require a high energy cost to induce an electron transfer from a neighboring dot. This is technically stated by saying that the charging energy of a dot is atypically low. Electrostatic considerations suggest that the charging energy scales inversely with size and this has been experimentally born out. Metallic quantum dots have charging energy of well below an eV while atoms have charging energies of at least several eV’s.

The current attention on architecture with quantum dots building blocks is partly motivated by potential applications of such nanoscale quantum devices. In this paper we explore how corresponding computations can be carried out. The technical problem is that the Coulombic repulsion between two electrons (of opposite spins) that occupy the same dot cannot be described in a one electron approximation. It requires allowing for correlation of electrons. The simplest model Hamiltonian that can describe the Coulombic (or charging energy) effects is due to Hubbard. This paper is a study of exploring a computationally tractable method for solving for the states of the Hubbard Hamiltonian for a lattice. The development makes essential use of the nature of the intended applications. At low temperatures, only those states of the array that are quite close to the ground state are important.

The Hubbard model is the simplest model one can use to study the Mott metal-insulator transition, i.e. the transition from a metallic to an insulating phase driven by correlations between electrons. Despite the extensive efforts in studying the Hubbard model  there are still difficulties in extending the one-dimensional results to higher-dimensions. The difficulties mainly come from the electron correlations inherent in this model, which becomes more complicated in two and three-dimensions. Several methods have been developed to treat these problems such as exact diagonalization methods, quantum Monte-Carlo simulations and a variety of approximation techniques like mean-field theory, Green’s function decoupling schemes, functional integral formulations , variational approach and perturbation expansion . It is already known that the numerical methods suffer from the finite-size effect and perturbation calculations are not useful when dealing with the intermediate-to-strong correlations. In this context, using the real-space renormalization group method seem to be a promising direction because of its non-perturbative nature. In fact, this method has been applied to quantum lattice systems. For example, the density matrix renormalization group has provided a revolutionary way to obtain reliable results for the one-dimensional Hubbard model and the numerical renormalization group for interacting finite Fermi systems and for excitations in atoms. To apply the renormalization group method to higher dimensions, the simplest way is to use the block renormalization group method(BRG). The BRG method has already been applied to interacting electrons in two-dimensional systems for both bipartite lattices and more recently for nonpartite lattices such as the triangular one.

In this paper, we present the real-space block renormalization group equations for fermion systems on a triangular lattice with hexagonal blocks. By using operator transformations, we obtain the conditions that make the renormalized Hamiltonian in the bare Hubbard model have the same structure as the old one, i.e. the renormalization group equations in the parameters space with constant dimension will remain the same, without any proliferation of couplings. Finally, using numerical calculations we show that the metal-insulator transition occurs at the critical value of $`U/t12.5`$.

## 2 Real-space renormalization group

In this section, we present a general computational procedure for applying the BRG method for interacting fermions on a lattice using the Hubbard Hamiltonian. As an example we will take the hexagonal block on a triangular lattice. The Hubbard Hamiltonian can be written as follows,

$$H=t\underset{<i,j>,\sigma }{}[c_{i\sigma }^+c_{j\sigma }+H.c.]+U\underset{i}{}n_in_i\mu \underset{i}{}(n_i+n_i),$$
(1)
where $`t`$ is the nearest-neighbor hopping term, $`U`$ is the local repulsive interaction and $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential. $`c_{i\sigma }^+(c_{i\sigma })`$ creates(annihilates) an electron with spin $`\sigma `$ in a Wannier orbital located at site $`i`$; the corresponding number operator is $`n_{i\sigma }=c_{i\sigma }^+c_{i\sigma }`$ and $`<`$ $`>`$ denotes the nearest-neighbor pairs. H.c. denotes the Hermitian conjugate.

The essence of the BRG method is to map the above many-particle Hamiltonian on a lattice to a new one with fewer degrees of freedom and with the same low-lying energy levels . Then the mapping is repeated leading to a final Hamiltonian for which an exact solution can be obtained. The procedure can be divided into three steps: First divide the $`N`$site lattice into appropriate $`n_s`$site blocks labeled by $`p(p=1,2,\mathrm{},N/n_s)`$ and separate the Hamiltonian $`H`$ into intrablock part $`H_B`$ and interblock $`H_{IB}`$

$$H=H_B+H_{IB}=\underset{p}{}H_p+\underset{<p,p^{}>}{}V_{p,p^{}},$$
(2)
where

$$H_p=t\underset{<i^{(p)},j^{(p)}>}{}[c_{i^{(p)}\sigma }^+c_{j^{(p)}\sigma }+H.C.]+U\underset{i^{(p)}}{}n_{i^{(p)}}n_{i^{(p)}}\mu \underset{i^{(p)}}{}(n_{i^{(p)}}+n_{i^{(p)}}),$$
(3)
and

$$V_{p,p^{}}=t\underset{<i^{(p,b)},j^{(p^{},b)}>}{}[c_{i^{(p,b)}\sigma }^+c_{j^{(p^{},b)}\sigma }+H.C.]$$
(4)
in which $`i^{(p)}`$ denotes the $`ith`$ site on the $`pth`$ block and $`i^{(p,b)}`$ denotes the border site of the block $`p`$.

The second step is to solve $`H_p`$ exactly to get the eigenvalues $`E_{p_i}`$ and eigenfunctions $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{p_i}(i=1,2,\mathrm{},4^{n_s}).`$ Then we can build the eigenfunctions of $`H_B`$ by direct multiplication of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{p_i}`$, which can be written as $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_B(i_{1,}i_2,\mathrm{},i_{N/n_s})>=|\mathrm{\Phi }_{1i_1}>|\mathrm{\Phi }_{2i_2}>\mathrm{}|\mathrm{\Phi }_{N/n_s}i_{N/n_s}>(i_1,i_2,\mathrm{}\{1,2,\mathrm{},4^{n_s}\})`$.

The last step is to treat each block as one site on a new lattice and the correlations between blocks as hopping interactions. The original Hilbert space has four states per site. By following the above procedure one obtains an equivalent Hamiltonian with $`(4^{n_s})^{N/n_s}=4^N,`$ degrees of freedom, which is the same as the original Hamiltonian. But in the realistic case, if we only care about the properties related to some special energy levels of the system it is not necessary to keep all the states for a block to obtain the new Hamiltonian. For example, when studying the metal-insulator-transition, we may only need to consider the ground state and the first excited state energies.

The above scheme is a general procedure for applying the BRG method. In order to make the new Hamiltonian more tractable, it is desirable to make it have the same structure as the original one, i.e. the reduction in size should not be accompanied by a proliferation of new couplings. Then we can use the iteration procedures to solve the model. To achieve this goal it is necessary to keep only 4 states in step 2, which can be understood from the following renormalized intrasite Hamiltonian. The four selected states are taken to be

$`|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p1}>`$ $`|0>_p^{},`$ (5)
$`|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p2}>`$ $`c_p^+|0>_p^{}=|>_p^{},`$ (6)
$`|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p3}>`$ $`c_p^+|0>_p^{}=|>_p^{},`$ (7)
$`|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p4}>`$ $`c_p^+|0>_p^{}=|>_p^{},`$ (8)
where $`c_{p\sigma }^+(c_{p\sigma }^{})`$ is the creation(annihilation)operator of the block state $`|\sigma >_p^{}`$ and their corresponding energies are $`E_i`$ $`(i=1,2,3,4)`$.

Our next task is to rewrite the old Hamiltonian $`H=H_B+H_{IB}`$ in the space spanned by the truncated basis

$$H^{}=\underset{\mathrm{\Psi }_B^{Truncated}\underset{B}{\overset{Truncated}{\stackrel{\mathrm{\_}}{\mathrm{\Psi }}}}}{}|\mathrm{\Psi }_B^{Truncated}><\mathrm{\Psi }_B^{Truncated}|H|\underset{B}{\overset{Truncated}{\stackrel{\mathrm{\_}}{\mathrm{\Psi }}}}><\underset{B}{\overset{Truncated}{\stackrel{\mathrm{\_}}{\mathrm{\Psi }}}}|,$$
(9)
where the truncated basis is given by

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_B^{Truncated}(i_{1,}i_2,\mathrm{},i_{N/n_s})>=|\mathrm{\Phi }_{1i_1}>|\mathrm{\Phi }_{2i_2}>\mathrm{}|\mathrm{\Phi }_{N/n_s}i_{N/n_s}>(i_1,i_2,\mathrm{}\{1,2,3,4\})$$
(10)
In order to avoid proliferation of additional couplings in $`H^{},`$ the four states kept from the block cannot be arbitrarily chosen. Some definite conditions must be satisfied in order to make $`H^{}`$ have the same structure as $`H`$. Substituting $`H`$ into $`H^{}`$ and using the product of different operators (see Table I) we can get the expression for $`H_p`$

$`H_p`$ $`=`$ $`|0>_p^{}E_1<0|_p^{}+|>_p^{}E_2<|_p^{}+|>_p^{}E_4<|_p^{}+|>_p^{}E_3<|_p^{}`$ (11)
$`=`$ $`E_1+(E_3E_1)n_{p,}^{}+(E_4E_1)n_{p,}^{}+(E_1+E_2E_3E_{4)}n_{p,}^{}n_{p,}^{}`$
Note that by keeping only four states from the block states in the beginning gives no other extra couplings in the new Hamiltonian.

Table I: The product of different operator transformations

In this table the product reads $`|0>^{}<0|^{}=1n_{}^{}n_{}^{}+n_{}^{}n_{}^{}`$, etc.

Comparing the above intrasite Hamiltonian with Eq.(1), we get the next conditions in order to copy the intrasite structure of the old Hamiltonian, i.e. $`E_3=E_4.`$ Because of the additional vacuum energy $`E_1`$ in the new Hamiltonian we rewrite the intrasite part of Eq.(1) as

$$H_B=U\underset{i}{}n_in_i\mu \underset{i}{}(n_i+n_i)+K\underset{i}{}I_i$$
(13)
where we introduce another parameter $`K`$ to the original system and $`I_i`$ is a unit operator. The new intrasite Hamiltonian is given by

$$H_B^{}=(E_1+E_22E_3)\underset{p}{}n_p^{}n_p^{}(E_1E_3)\underset{p}{}(n_p^{}+n_p^{})+E_1\underset{p}{}I_p.$$
(14)
Then the renormalized parameters $`U,\mu `$ and $`K`$ can be obtained from the following relations

$`U^{}`$ $`=`$ $`E_1+E_22E_3`$ (15)
$`\mu ^{}`$ $`=`$ $`E_1E_3`$ (16)
$`K^{}`$ $`=`$ $`E_1`$ (17)
in which $`E_1,E_2`$ and $`E_3`$ are functions of the old parameters $`t,U,\mu ,K`$.

For the half-filled case, $`\mu =U/2,`$ $`H_B`$ can be expressed as

$$H_B=U\underset{i}{}(\frac{1}{2}n_i)(\frac{1}{2}n_i)+K\underset{i}{}I_i$$
(18)
with the initial value of $`K=\frac{U}{4}`$. By using the particle-hole symmetry, $`E_1=E_2`$, the renormalization group equations for $`U`$ and $`K`$ take the form

$`U^{}`$ $`=`$ $`2(E_1E_3)`$ (19)
$`K^{}`$ $`=`$ $`(E_1+E_3)/2`$ (20)
To illustrate this procedure, let us consider the triangular lattice with hexagonal blocks as shown in figure 1. For this non-bipartite lattice the interaction between blocks can be written as

$`V_{pp^{}}`$ $`=`$ $`(t){\displaystyle \underset{\sigma ,i_1,i_1^{}i_2,i_2^{}}{}}\{[|\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1}|c_{1^{(p)}\sigma }^+|\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1^{}}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1^{}}|]\times [|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2}|c_{5^{(p^{})}\sigma }|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2^{}}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2^{}}|]`$
$`+[|\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1}`$ $`>`$ $`<\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1}|c_{2^{(p)}\sigma }^+|\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1^{}}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1^{}}|]\times [|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2}|c_{4^{(p^{})}\sigma }|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2^{}}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2^{}}|]`$
$`+[|\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1}`$ $`>`$ $`<\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1}|c_{2^{(p)}\sigma }^+|\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1^{}}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{pi_1^{}}|]\times [|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2}|c_{5^{(p^{})}\sigma }|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2^{}}><\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}i_2^{}}|]+H.C.\}`$ (21)
Since we would like to keep $`V_{pp^{}}`$ of the form

$$V_{pp^{}}=(t^{})\underset{\sigma }{}[c_{p\sigma }^+c_{p^{}\sigma }^{}+H.C],$$
(22)
we use the product transformation in Table I to simplify Eq. (20),

$`V_{pp^{}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma ,<i,j>}{}}\{<\sigma |_p^{}c_{i^{(p)}\sigma }^+|0>_p^{}+[<\sigma ,\sigma |_p^{}c_{i^{(p)}\sigma }^+|\sigma >_p^{}<\sigma |_p^{}c_{i^{(p)}\sigma }^+|0>_p^{}]n_{p\sigma }^{}\}c_{p\sigma }^+`$
$`\times \{`$ $`<`$ $`0|_p^{}^{}c_{j^{(p^{})}\sigma }|\sigma >_p^{}^{}+[<\sigma |_p^{}^{}c_{j^{(p^{})}\sigma }|\sigma ,\sigma >_p^{}^{}<\sigma |_p^{}^{}c_{j^{(p^{})}\sigma }|0>_p^{}^{}]n_{p^{}\sigma }^{}\}c_{p^{}\sigma }^{}+H.C.,`$
$`(`$ $`<`$ $`ij>=<1,5>,<2,4>,<2,5>).`$ (23)
It can be easily seen now that in order to make all the extra couplings vanish, it is necessary to make further restrictions upon the selected states,

$`<`$ $`\sigma ,\sigma |_p^{}c_{i^{(p)}\sigma }^+|_p\sigma >_p^{}=<\sigma |_p^{}c_{i^{(p)}\sigma }^+|0>_p^{},`$ (24)
$`<`$ $`\sigma |_p^{}^{}c_{j^{(p^{})}\sigma }|\sigma ,\sigma >_p^{}^{}=<0|_p^{}^{}c_{j^{(p^{})}\sigma }|\sigma >_p^{}^{}`$ (25)
Using similar calculations to the other neighboring interactions of the block, we can finally obtain the following conditions,

$$<\sigma ,\sigma |_p^{}c_{i^{(p)}\sigma }^+|_p\sigma >_p^{}=<\sigma |_p^{}c_{i^{(p)}\sigma }^+|0>_p^{}=\lambda $$
(26)
for all the border sites on the block. Then the new hopping term becomes,

$$V_{pp^{}}=\nu \lambda ^2\underset{\sigma }{}c_{p\sigma }^+c_{p^{}\sigma }^{},$$
(27)
where $`\nu `$ represents the number of couplings between neighboring blocks. In figure 1 $`\nu =3`$. The last renormalization group equation is readily obtained

$$t^{}=\nu \lambda ^2t.$$
(28)
Up to now, we have given a general discussion of the conditions under which no proliferation of couplings results from the application of the BRG method to non-partite lattice. Because on the border of non-partite lattice block, there is only one type of sites, the above procedures can be extended to other lattices with different dimensions or blocks without much difficulty.

## 3 State Selections

After deriving the conditions for the renormalization group equations, the next task is to select states that satisfy these conditions. At this stage the symmetry properties of the lattice play an important role. From Eqs.(23) and (24), it can be easily seen that if we assume the particle number in the state $`|0>^{}`$ to be $`N_e1`$, then in $`|>^{},|>^{}`$ and $`|>^{},`$ there should be $`N_e,`$ $`N_e,`$ $`N_e+1`$ particles respectively. Moreover if the spin in $`|0>^{}`$ is $`S_z`$, the spins for $`|>^{},|>^{}`$ and $`|>^{},`$ should be $`S_z+1/2,S_z1/2`$ and $`S_z`$. The total electron number $`N_e`$ and the spin $`S_z`$ for each block are good quantum numbers since their corresponding operators commute with the Hubbard Hamiltonian. So when we diagonalize the Hubbard Hamiltonian of the selected block, we keep $`N_e`$ and $`S_z`$ fixed to be ($`N_e`$-1, $`S_z`$), ($`N_e`$, $`S_z`$+1/2), ($`N_e`$, $`S_z`$-1/2) and ($`N_e`$+1, $`S_z`$) respectively. Thus we obtain four groups of eigenenergies and eigenstates corresponding to the above quantum numbers. From each group, we select the lowest-energy state to form the final required four states. It should be mentioned that the lowest-energy state has to be selected according to definite special symmetry considerations, which shall be discussed in the next paragraph. In order to obtain the insulating to conducting gap, which is defined to be the energy difference between extracting one electron from the system and adding one electron to it, $`N_e`$ is selected to be equal to $`N_s`$. For $`S_z`$, we choose it to be zero so as to make the block have the same spin property as the one-site. So now the renormalized lattice will be composed of $`N/n_s`$ renormalized ”sites” with $`N/n_s`$ ”particles”.

Instead of forcing the above conserved quantities upon the selected states in analogy to the one site properties in a consistent way, here we get them directly from the no-coupling-proliferation conditions. $`\lambda `$ does not depend on $`\sigma `$ in Eq. (25), this can be guaranteed by the particle-hole symmetry, which means that only in half-filled lattice can the renormalized Hamiltonian have exactly the same form as the original one. Moreover, the irrelevance of $`\lambda `$ with respect to the border site $`i^{(p,b)}`$ can be shown by requiring the selected states to belong to the same irreducible representation of the spatial group of the lattice. For the triangular lattice with hexagonal blocks, the Hamiltonian is invariant under $`C_{6v}`$ . So if we choose the same one-dimensional irreducible representation of the group $`C_{6v}`$ for $`|0>^{}`$ , $`|>^{},|>^{}`$ and $`|>^{},`$ the conditions can be satisfied.

## 4 Numerical Calculations and discussions

The insulating to conducting gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_g`$ and the ground state energy per site $`E_g`$ for the half-filled Hubbard model on a triangular lattice with hexagonal blocks can be written as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_g=lim_n\mathrm{}U^{(n)}$$
(29)
and

$$E_g=lim_n\mathrm{}\frac{K^{(n)}+\frac{U^{(n)}}{4}}{7^n}+\frac{U}{2}$$
(30)
where $`n`$ denotes the number of iterations in the renormalization equations. As $`n\mathrm{}`$, the lattice containing $`7^n`$ sites will be renormalized to one ’site’, which can be solved exactly to obatin the above equations. U/2 is added in Eq.(29) in order to compensate the chemical potential energy substracted in the original Hamiltonian. The metal-insulator-transition for this lattice can be examined by considering the energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ as a function of $`(U/t)`$. If the insulating gap disappears the system exhibits metallic behavior. Otherwise it is insulating.

Figure 2 shows the numerical results for the scaled gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_g/t`$ as a function of $`(U/t)`$. There is a first-order phase transition at $`(U/t)_c12.5`$. This finding is quite different from the case of half-filled square lattice where an insulating gap exists for arbitrarily small values of $`U/t`$. This is because there is a perfect nesting of the Fermi surface on a square lattice, which makes the model unstable toward antiferromagnetism as soon as a nonzero $`U`$ is turned on, driving the system to an insulating state.

On the triangular lattice, for the lack of perfect nesting, metal-insulator-transition takes place at a finite value of $`U/t`$. But because there is no exact solution to the two-dimensional Hubbard model, there are still controversies upon the exact value for this critical point. The situation becomes more complicated and subtle because of the frustrations inherent in the triangular lattice, which may induce a nontrivial competitions among different magnetic phases. In the Hartree-Fock calculations by Krishnamurthy et al. they found that for small $`U/t`$ the system is a paramagnetic metal which turns to a metal with incommensurate spiral spin-density wave at $`U_{c1}/t=3.97.`$ Two successive first-order phase transitions occur at $`U_{c2}/t=4.45,`$ a semi-metallic linear spin-density wave is stabilized and a first-order metal-insulator-transition to an anti-ferromagnetic insulator occurs at $`U_{c3}/t=5.27.`$ Capone et al. obtained qualitatively similar phase transitions by using the Kotliar-Ruckenstein slave-boson technique. That is, the weak-coupling paramagnetic metal continuously evolves into a spiral metal at $`U_{c1}/t=6.68,`$ which crosses the linearly polarized spin-density-wave ground state at $`U_{c2}/t=6.84.`$ The latter phase undergo a further first-order transition toward an anti-ferromagnetic insulator at $`U_{c3}/t=7.68`$. The exact diagonalization results exhibit a first-order transition between the paramagnetic metal and the anti-ferromagnetic insulator at $`U/t=12.07,`$ without intermediate ”exotic” phases. Our results for the critical value of $`(U/t)12.5`$ for the metal-insulator-transition and the ground state energy as a function of $`U/t`$ are in agreement with results obtained by the exact diagonalization method.

In summary, we find that there is a first-order phase metal-insulator-transition, at $`(U/t)_c=12.5`$ in full agreement with the exact diagonalization result $`U/t=12.07`$.

## 5 Concluding Remarks

A practical renormalization method for an array described by a Hubbard Hamiltonian has been presented. Specifically, we could find conditions under which the renormalized Hubbard Hamiltonian on a nonpartite lattice has no proliferation of coupling. The method is especially suited for getting the lowest excited states. An application demonstrating the identification of a first order metal-insulator transition has been discussed in detail. In future work we intend to build upon the present results in two directions. First, to apply them to the computation of the transport properties of lattices of quantum dots. We also hope to be able to incorporate into the method one essential aspect of quantum dots that, so far, is not included. This is the (small but finite) variability of the chemical potential. This results from the size fluctuations of dots as they are prepared in the laboratory. In real-space BRG method, how to truncate the states for one block is of central importance to the accuracy of the final results. In this paper, four states for each block are selected from the requirement of non-proliferations of parameters. This greatly simply the theoretical handling of this problem while keeping the main related physics. But for two-dimensional system, how to judge the convergence when more states are kept is still an open problem in this direction. More work is under way.

Acknowledgements
We are delighted to dedicate this paper to Professor R.S. Berry on the occasion of his 70th birthday. We acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.


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# Can Reissner-Nordström wormholes be considered for Spacetime Foam formation?

## I Introduction

Among the long-standing problems in physics, a fundamental one, from a theoretical point of view, is the absence of a quantum theory of gravity. Even if a lot of work has been devoted, especially in the direction of string theory and subsequent modifications, i.e. the branes, a complete scheme is still lacking. On the other hand in the traditional path integral approach to quantum gravity, a typical problem is that the generating functional

$$𝒟\left[g_{\mu \nu }\right]\mathrm{exp}iS_g\left[g_{\mu \nu }\right]$$
(1)
is ill defined because $`𝒟\left[g_{\mu \nu }\right]`$ does not represent a measure and moreover there is no convergence. However, in the context of a WKB approximation with a fixed background, one can obtain interesting informations. Indeed, if one considers a background $`\overline{g}_{\mu \nu }`$, the gravitational field splits into

$$g_{\mu \nu }=\overline{g}_{\mu \nu }+h_{\mu \nu },$$
(2)
where $`h_{\mu \nu }`$ is a quantum fluctuation around the background field. Then Eq. $`\left(\text{1}\right)`$ becomes

$$𝒟g_{\mu \nu }\mathrm{exp}iS_g\left[g_{\mu \nu }\right]\mathrm{exp}iS_g\left[\overline{g}_{\mu \nu }\right]𝒟h_{\mu \nu }\mathrm{exp}iS_g^{\left(2\right)}\left[h_{\mu \nu }\right],$$
(3)
where $`S_g^{\left(2\right)}\left[h_{\mu \nu }\right]`$ is the action approximated to second order. In the context of the Euclidean path integration, last expression becomes

$$𝒟g_{\mu \nu }\mathrm{exp}\left(I_g\left[g_{\mu \nu }\right]\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(I_g\left[\overline{g}_{\mu \nu }\right]\right)𝒟h_{\mu \nu }\mathrm{exp}\left(I_g^{\left(2\right)}\left[h_{\mu \nu }\right]\right).$$
(4)
Previous equation can be cast in the form

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }=A\mathrm{exp}\left(I_{cl}\right),$$
(5)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the decay probability per unit volume and time, while $`A`$ is the prefactor coming from the saddle point evaluation and $`I_{cl}`$ is the classical part of the action. If a single negative eigenvalue appears in the prefactor $`A`$, it means that the related bounce shifts the energy of the false ground state. In particular, it is possible to discuss decay probabilities from one spacetime to another one . For certain classes of gravitational backgrounds, namely the static spherically symmetric metrics, it could be interesting the use of other methods based on variational approach. In a series of papers, we have used such an approach to show that a model of spacetime foam can be concretely realized if one considers a collection of Schwarzschild wormholes whose energy is given by a Casimir energy. We recall that the Casimir energy involves a subtraction procedure between zero point energies having the same boundary conditions. In this paper we would like to apply such methods to another class of static spherically symmetric wormholes involving the electromagnetic field. This class is described by the Reissner-Nordström (RN) metric which is a solution of the Einstein-Maxwell equations with two basic parameters: a mass $`M`$ and a charge $`Q`$. Together with the Schwarzschild metric also the RN metric shares the property of being asymptotically flat. This means that the Casimir energy computation for such wormholes class will be made with flat space as a reference space. The final expression will be compared with that one obtained for the Schwarzschild wormholes showing that the Casimir energy for RN wormholes is always higher than the Casimir energy for the Schwarzschild wormholes. This means that RN wormholes cannot be taken as a representation of the ground state of a foamy spacetime. To this purpose we will fix our attention to the following quantity

$$E^{RN}(M,Q)=E^{flat}\left(0\right)+\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}+\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|1loop},$$
(6)
representing the total energy computed to one-loop in a RN background. $`E^{flat}\left(0\right)`$ is the reference space energy, which in this case is flat space. $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}`$ is the energy difference between the RN and the flat metrics, stored in the boundaries and $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|1loop}`$ is the quantum correction to the classical term. The analogy between $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|1loop}`$ and the prefactor of Eq.$`\left(\text{5}\right)`$ is the key to obtain information about instability. Indeed if we discover that the spectrum of the second order differential operator associated with the quantum fluctuations of transverse and traceless tensors (TT) admits bound states, then we have instability. In this paper we will assume that only one unstable mode appears in the spectrum of TT tensors; this is sufficient to apply Coleman arguments about transition from a vacuum to another one. Note that with this assumption we are in the worst situation, namely the Schwarzschild and RN wormholes can be compared. In fact without the negative mode a spontaneous transition from vacuum to vacuum cannot happen. Therefore in this framework, it is sufficient to compute the stable part of the Casimir energy to compare these different pictures. To concretely compute Eq.$`\left(\text{6}\right)`$ we refer to the following Hamiltonian with boundary

$$H_T=H_\mathrm{\Sigma }+H_\mathrm{\Sigma }=_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x\left(N+N_i^i\right)+H_\mathrm{\Sigma },$$
(7)
where $`N`$ is the lapse function, $`N_i`$ is the shift function and

$$\{\begin{array}{c}=G_{ijkl}\pi ^{ij}\pi ^{kl}\left(\frac{16\pi G}{\sqrt{g}}\right)\frac{\sqrt{g}}{16\pi G}R^{\left(3\right)}+_M\hfill \\ ^i=2\pi _{|j}^{ij}+_M^i.\hfill \end{array}$$
(8)
$`_M`$ is the energy-momentum tensor contribution of the electromagnetic field. $`H_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ represents the energy stored into the boundary. Since the metric considered has no off-diagonal elements, the Hamiltonian becomes

$$H_T=H_\mathrm{\Sigma }+H_\mathrm{\Sigma }=_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3xN+H_\mathrm{\Sigma }.$$
(9)
However the physical quantity of interest is the Casimir energy. Therefore we will consider the following expectation value

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }\left|H_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{RN}H_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{flat}\right|\mathrm{\Psi }}{\mathrm{\Psi }|\mathrm{\Psi }},$$
(10)
where $`H_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{RN}`$ and $`H_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{flat}`$ are the total Hamiltonians referred to the RN and flat spacetimes respectively for the volume term and $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is a trial wave functional of the gaussian form. Note that the flat space is a particular case of the RN space with the parameters $`M=Q=0`$. Since the reference space is the same one of the Schwarzschild space, it is immediate to recognize that if an instability appears, flat space could decay via a Schwarzschild black hole pair creation or via a Reissner-Nordström black hole pair creation. Therefore to give indications about the “ground state” of a foamy spacetime, it is important to establish if

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{Schwarzschild}\left(M\right)$$
(11)
to one-loop approximation. It is important to remark that it is the vacuum energy difference with the same asymptotic reference space that gives the possibility to choose which vacuum is appropriate and not the direct energy difference between these possible candidates. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: in section II, we introduce the Reissner-Nordström metric; in section III, we compute the boundary energy by means of quasilocal energy; in section IV, a variational calculation will be set up to compute the Casimir energy and in particular we will restrict our analysis to the transverse-traceless tensor metric fluctuations (TT); in section V, we evaluate the spectrum of the operator associated with TT tensors (Laplace-Beltrami operator) and we compare the result with what we have obtained in case of Schwarzschild wormholes; in section VI, we summarize and conclude. Units in which $`\mathrm{}=c=k=1`$ are used throughout the paper.

## II The Reissner-Nordström metric

The RN line element is

$$ds^2=f\left(r\right)dt^2+f\left(r\right)^1dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2,$$
(12)
with

$$f\left(r\right)=\left(1\frac{2MG}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right),$$
(13)
where $`Q^2=G\left(Q_e^2+Q_m^2\right)`$; $`Q_e`$ and $`Q_m`$ are the electric and magnetic charge respectively. When the electric charge is considered the electromagnetic potential assumes the form $`A_\alpha =(Q_e/r,0,0,0)`$ and the electromagnetic tensor $`F_{\alpha \beta }=_\alpha A_\beta _\beta A_\alpha `$ is $`F_{01}=Q_e/r^2`$. In the case of a pure magnetic field, the form is $`A_\alpha =(0,Q_m\mathrm{sin}\theta ,0,0)`$ and the electromagnetic tensor becomes $`F_{23}=`$ $`Q_m\mathrm{sin}\theta `$. Therefore, although the gravitational potential $`f\left(r\right)`$ assumes the same form, the gravitational perturbation contribute in a different way. When $`Q=0`$ the metric describes the Schwarzschild metric. When $`Q=M=0`$, the metric is flat. For $`Q0`$, we can distinguish three different cases:

* $`MG>Q`$. In this case the gravitational potential $`f\left(r\right)`$ admits two real distinct solutions located at

$$\{\begin{array}{c}r_+=MG+\sqrt{\left(MG\right)^2Q^2}\\ r_{}=MG\sqrt{\left(MG\right)^2Q^2}\end{array},$$
(14)
with $`f\left(r\right)>0`$ for $`r>r_+`$ and $`0<r<r_{}`$ . In the wormhole language, we will say that $`r_{}`$ is the inner throat and $`r_+`$ is the outer throat. In the horizon language $`r_{}`$ is a Cauchy horizon and $`r_+`$ is an event horizon. For each root there is a surface gravity defined by

$$\kappa _\pm =\underset{rr_\pm }{lim}\frac{1}{2}\left|g_{00}^{}\left(r\right)\right|,$$
(15)
whose values are

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\kappa _+=\left(r_+r_{}\right)/2r_+^2\\ \kappa _{}=\left(r_{}r_+\right)/2r_{}^2\end{array}$$
(16)
and for each surface gravity there exists a bifurcation surface associated to a wormhole throat. The Hawking temperature associated with the surface gravity of the event horizon is

$$T_H=\frac{\kappa _+}{2\pi }.$$
(17)
* $`MG=Q`$. This is the extreme case. The gravitational potential $`f\left(r\right)`$ admits two real coincident solutions located at $`r_+=r_{}=r_e=MG`$ and its form is $`f\left(r\right)=\left(1MG/r\right)^2`$. Here we discover that $`\kappa _+=\kappa _{}=0`$ and $`T_H=0`$.
* $`MG<Q`$. In this case the gravitational potential $`f\left(r\right)`$ admits two complex conjugate solutions located at

$$\{\begin{array}{c}r_{+,i}=MG+i\sqrt{Q^2\left(MG\right)^2}\\ r_{,i}=MGi\sqrt{Q^2\left(MG\right)^2}\end{array},$$
(18)
respectively.

Cases a) and b) imply $`Q=0`$ when $`M=0`$. We will restrict our attention on case a) only.

## III Quasilocal energy

Quasilocal energy is defined as the value of the Hamiltonian that generates unit time translations orthogonal to the two-dimensional boundary***See AppendixC for the explicit derivation of the Hamiltonian in presence of a bifurcation surface.,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}=\frac{1}{8\pi G}_{S^2}d^2x\sqrt{\sigma }\left(kk^0\right),$$
(19)
where $`\left|N\right|=1`$ at $`S^2`$ and $`k^0`$ is the trace of the extrinsic curvature corresponding to the reference space, which in this case is flat space. The radial coordinate $`x`$ continuous on $``$ is defined by

$$dx=\pm \frac{dr}{\sqrt{1\frac{2MG}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}}},$$
(20)
which in its integrated form becomes

$$x\left(r\right)=\pm \left(r\sqrt{f\left(r\right)}+MG\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{rMG+r\sqrt{f\left(r\right)}}{\sqrt{\left(MG\right)^2Q^2}}\right)\right)$$
(21)
with $`x\left(r\right)=0`$ when $`r=r_\pm `$. The surfaces located at $`r_+`$ and $`r_{}`$ are bifurcation surfaces denoted by $`S_+^0`$ and $`S_{}^0`$, respectively.

In analogy with the Schwarzschild case, see Fig.1, we will restrict our analysis to the regions I and II of Fig.2, corresponding to the bifurcation surface $`S_+^0`$. The constant time hypersurface we will consider will be denoted by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_+=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{++}\mathrm{\Sigma }_+`$, where the plus sign of Eq.$`\left(\text{20}\right)`$ is relative to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{++}`$, while the minus sign is related to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_+`$. In $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{++}`$ the evaluation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}`$ can be obtained as follows: first we consider the static Einstein-Rosen bridge associated to the RN space

$$ds^2=N^2\left(r\right)dt^2+g_{xx}dx^2+r^2\left(x\right)d\mathrm{\Omega }^2,$$
(22)
where $`N`$, $`g_{xx}`$, and $`r`$ are functions of $`x`$ defined by Eq.$`\left(\text{20}\right)`$. Second, we consider the boundary $`S_{++}^2`$, located at $`x\left(r\right)=\overline{x}^{++}\left(R\right)`$, and its associated normal $`n^\mu =\delta _y^\mu `$. The expression of the trace

$$k=\frac{1}{\sqrt{h}}\left(\sqrt{h}n^\mu \right)_{,\mu },$$
(23)
gives for the RN space

$$k^{RN}=2\frac{r,_x}{r}_{|RN}=2\frac{\sqrt{f\left(r\right)}}{r}_{|RN}=\frac{2}{r}\sqrt{1\frac{2MG}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}}.$$
(24)
Note that if we make the identification $`N^2=1\frac{2MG}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}`$, the line element $`\left(\text{22}\right)`$ reduces to the RN metric written in another form; for our purposes the form of $`N\left(r\right)`$ can be left unspecified. Thus the computation of $`E_+`$ gives

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}=\frac{1}{8\pi G}_{S_{++}^2}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }^2r^2\left[\frac{2\sqrt{f\left(r\right)}}{r}+\frac{2}{r}\right]_{|r=R}$$
(25)
$$=\frac{R}{G}\left[\sqrt{1\frac{2MG}{R}+\frac{Q^2}{R^2}}1\right].$$
(26)
When $`R2MG`$, (and therefore $`RQ`$), we obtain

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}\frac{R}{G}\left[\left(1\frac{MG}{R}+\frac{Q^2}{2R^2}\right)1\right]=M.$$
(27)
As expected, since the RN space is A.F., we have obtained that the classical contribution to the energy is exactly the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner mass (ADM) . Since the RN metric is A.F., the computation of the classical energy term leads to

$$E^{RN}(M,Q)=E^{Flat}+\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}=\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical},$$
(28)
which can be computed by means of quasilocal energy. Thus in complete analogy with the Schwarzschild case, we conclude that flat space cannot decay into RN space because the associated boundary energy (ADM) is different, for every value of the mass $`M`$ included the extreme value. However if we look at the whole hypersurface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_+=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{++}\mathrm{\Sigma }_+`$, the total classical energy becomes

$$E^{RN}(M,Q)=\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^++\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^{}$$
(29)
with

$`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^+={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi G}}{\displaystyle _{S_{++}^2}}d^2x\sqrt{\sigma }\left(kk^0\right),`$

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^{}=\frac{1}{8\pi G}_{S_+^2}d^2x\sqrt{\sigma }\left(kk^0\right).$$
(30)
Here the boundaries $`S_{++}^2`$ and $`S_+^2`$ are located in the two disconnected regions $`_{++}`$ and $`_+`$ respectively with coordinate values $`x=\overline{x}^{++}\left(\overline{x}^+\right)`$ and the trace of the extrinsic curvature in both regions is

$$k^{RN}=\{\begin{array}{c}2r,_x/ron\mathrm{\Sigma }_{++}\\ 2r,_x/ron\mathrm{\Sigma }_+\end{array}.$$
(31)
Thus one gets

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^\pm =\{\begin{array}{c}MonS_{++}^2\\ MonS_+^2\end{array},$$
(32)
where for $`E_{}`$ we have used the conventions relative to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_+`$ and $`S_+^2`$. Therefore for every value of the boundary $`R`$, (provided we take symmetric boundary conditions with respect to the bifurcation surface), we have

$$E^{RN}(M,Q)=M+\left(M\right)=0,$$
(33)
namely the energy is conserved. As stressed in Ref., since we have a spacetime with a bifurcation surface, the quantities $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^{}`$ have the same relative sign, while the total energy is given by the sum $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^++\mathrm{\Delta }E_{Flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|classical}^{}`$In Ref. we have a subtraction instead of a sum. This is due to conventions adopted.. The energies associated to the boundaries are symmetric and they have the same relative sign while the total energy reflects the orientation reversal of the two boundaries. Apparently, Eq.$`\left(\text{30}\right)`$ seems to violate causality, because of the minus appearance in front of the expression. However, as reported in AppendixC, it is such a sign that makes the computation causality preserving. Since the total classical energy is conserved we can discuss the existence of an instability. To this aim we refer to the variational approach to compute the energy density to one-loop.

## IV Energy Density Calculation in Schrödinger Representation

In previous section we have fixed our attention to the classical part of Eq.$`\left(\text{6}\right)`$. In this section, we apply the same calculation scheme of Refs. to compute one loop corrections to the classical RN term. Like the Schwarzschild case, there appear two classical constraints

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\text{ }=0\hfill \\ ^i=0\hfill \end{array}$$
(34)
and two quantum constraints

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}\text{ }=0\hfill \\ ^i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}=0\hfill \end{array}$$
(35)
for the Hamiltonian respectively, which are satisfied both by the RN and flat metric on shell. $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}`$ $`=0`$ is known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation (WDW). Our purpose is the computation of

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|1loop}=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }\left|H_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{RN}H_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{flat}\right|\mathrm{\Psi }}{\mathrm{\Psi }|\mathrm{\Psi }}$$
(36)
where $`H_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{RN}`$ and $`H_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{flat}`$ are the total Hamiltonians referred to the RN and flat spacetimes respectively for the volume term and $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is a wave functional obtained following the usual WKB expansion of the WDW solution. In this context, the approximated wave functional will be substituted by a trial wave functional of the gaussian form according to the variational approach we shall use to evaluate $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)_{|1loop}`$. To compute such a quantity we will consider on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ deviations from the RN metric spatial section of the form,

$$g_{ij}=\overline{g}_{ij}+h_{ij},$$
(37)
where

$$\overline{g}_{ij}dx^idx^j=\left(1\frac{2MG}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right)^1dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2$$
(38)
is the spatial RN background. Thus the expansion of the three-scalar curvature $`d^3x\sqrt{g}R^{\left(3\right)}`$ up to $`o\left(h^2\right)`$ gives

$`{\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}d^3x\sqrt{\overline{g}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}h\mathrm{}h+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}h^{li}\mathrm{}h_{li}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}h^{ij}_l_ih_j^l+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}h_l_ih^{li}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}h^{ij}R_{ia}h_j^a+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}hR_{ij}h^{ij}\right]`$

$$+_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x\sqrt{\overline{g}}\left[\frac{1}{4}h\left(R^{\left(0\right)}\right)h\right],$$
(39)
where $`R^{\left(0\right)}`$ is the three-scalar curvature on-shell. To explicitly make calculations, we need an orthogonal decomposition for both $`\pi _{ij\text{ }}`$and $`h_{ij}`$ to disentangle gauge modes from physical deformations. We define the inner product

$$h,k:=_\mathrm{\Sigma }\sqrt{g}G^{ijkl}h_{ij}\left(x\right)k_{kl}\left(x\right)d^3x,$$
(40)
by means of the inverse WDW metric $`G_{ijkl}`$, to have a metric on the space of deformations, i.e. a quadratic form on the tangent space at h, with

$$G^{ijkl}=(g^{ik}g^{jl}+g^{il}g^{jk}2g^{ij}g^{kl}).$$
(41)
The inverse metric is defined on co-tangent space and it assumes the form

$$p,q:=_\mathrm{\Sigma }\sqrt{g}G_{ijkl}p^{ij}\left(x\right)q^{kl}\left(x\right)d^3x\text{,}$$
(42)
so that

$$G^{ijnm}G_{nmkl}=\frac{1}{2}\left(\delta _k^i\delta _l^j+\delta _l^i\delta _k^j\right).$$
(43)
Note that in this scheme the “inverse metric” is actually the WDW metric defined on phase space. Now, we have the desired decomposition on the tangent space of 3-metric deformations:

$$h_{ij}=\frac{1}{3}hg_{ij}+\left(L\xi \right)_{ij}+h_{ij}^{}$$
(44)
where the operator $`L`$ maps $`\xi _i`$ into symmetric tracefree tensors

$$\left(L\xi \right)_{ij}=_i\xi _j+_j\xi _i\frac{2}{3}g_{ij}\left(\xi \right).$$
(45)
Then the inner product between three-geometries becomes

$`h,h:={\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}\sqrt{g}G^{ijkl}h_{ij}\left(x\right)h_{kl}\left(x\right)d^3x=`$

$$_\mathrm{\Sigma }\sqrt{g}\left[\frac{2}{3}h^2+\left(L\xi \right)^{ij}\left(L\xi \right)_{ij}+h^{ij}h_{ij}^{}\right].$$
(46)
With the orthogonal decomposition in hand we can define the trial wave functional

$$\mathrm{\Psi }\left[h_{ij}\left(\stackrel{}{x}\right)\right]=𝒩\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{1}{4}\left[hK^1h_{x,y}^{}+\left(L\xi \right)K^1\left(L\xi \right)_{x,y}^{}+hK^1h_{x,y}^{Trace}\right]\right\},$$
(47)
where $`𝒩`$ is a normalization factor. Since we are only interested in the perturbations of the physical degrees of freedom, we will only fix our attention on the TT (traceless and transverseless) tensor sector, therefore reducing the previous form intoIn this paper we have defined the trial wave functional without a Planck length constant factor in the exponent. This choice alters momentarily the physical dimensions of the problem which are reestablished after the variational procedure.

$$\mathrm{\Psi }\left[h_{ij}\left(\stackrel{}{x}\right)\right]=𝒩\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{1}{4}hK^1h_{x,y}^{}\right\}.$$
(48)
This restriction is motivated by the fact that if an instability appears this will be in the physical sector referred to TT tensors, namely a nonconformal instability. This choice seems to be corroborated by the action decomposition of, where only TT tensors contribute to the partition function§§§See also for another point of view.. To calculate the energy density, we need to know the action of some basic operators on $`\mathrm{\Psi }\left[h_{ij}\right]`$. The action of the operator $`h_{ij}`$ on $`|\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Psi }\left[h_{ij}\right]`$ is realized by

$$h_{ij}\left(x\right)|\mathrm{\Psi }=h_{ij}\left(\stackrel{}{x}\right)\mathrm{\Psi }\left[h_{ij}\right],$$
(49)
while the action of the operator $`\pi _{ij}`$ on $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$, in general, is

$$\pi _{ij}\left(x\right)|\mathrm{\Psi }=i\frac{\delta }{\delta h_{ij}\left(\stackrel{}{x}\right)}\mathrm{\Psi }\left[h_{ij}\right].$$
(50)
The inner product is defined by the functional integration

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_1\mathrm{\Psi }_2=\left[𝒟h_{ij}\right]\mathrm{\Psi }_1^{}\left\{h_{ij}\right\}\mathrm{\Psi }_2\left\{h_{kl}\right\}$$
(51)
and by applying previous functional integration rules, we obtain the expression of the one-loop-like Hamiltonian form for TT (traceless and transverseless) deformations

$$H^{}=\frac{1}{4}_{}d^3x\sqrt{g}G^{ijkl}\left[\left(16\pi G\right)K^1(x,x)_{ijkl}+\frac{1}{16\pi G}\left(\mathrm{}_2\right)_j^aK^{}(x,x)_{iakl}\right].$$
(52)
The propagator $`K^{}(x,x)_{iakl}`$ comes from a functional integration and it can be represented as

$$K^{}(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y})_{iakl}:=\underset{\tau }{}\frac{h_{ia}^{}\left(\stackrel{}{x}\right)h_{kl}^{}\left(\stackrel{}{y}\right)}{2\lambda \left(\tau \right)},$$
(53)
where $`h_{ia}^{}\left(\stackrel{}{x}\right)`$ are the eigenfunctions of $`\mathrm{}_2`$. $`\tau `$ denotes a complete set of indices and $`\lambda \left(\tau \right)`$ are a set of variational parameters to be determined by the minimization of Eq.$`\left(\text{52}\right)`$.

## V The Reissner-Nordström Metric spin 2 operator and the evaluation of the energy density

To evaluate the energy density, we are led to study the following eigenvalue equation

$$\left(\mathrm{}_2\right)_j^ah_a^i=E^2h_j^i$$
(54)
where $`\left(\mathrm{}_2\right)_j^a`$ is the Spin-two operator for the RN metric defined by

$$\left(\mathrm{}_2\right)_j^a:=\mathrm{}\delta _j^a+2V_j^a.$$
(55)
$`\mathrm{}`$ is the curved Laplacian (Laplace-Beltrami operator) on a RN background and $`V_{j\text{ }}^a`$ is defined as

$$V_j^a:=R_j^aP_j^a,$$
(56)
where $`R_j^a`$ is the mixed Ricci tensor whose components are:

$$R_i^a=\{\frac{2MG}{r^3}+\frac{2Q^2}{r^4},\frac{MG}{r^3},\frac{MG}{r^3}\}$$
(57)
and $`P_j^a`$ is a mixed tensor coming from the electromagnetic energy-momentum tensor expanded to second order in $`h_{ij}`$See Appendix B.. We will follow Regge and Wheeler in analyzing the equation as modes of definite frequency, angular momentum and parity. The quantum number corresponding to the projection of the angular momentum on the z-axis will be set to zero. This choice will not alter the contribution to the total energy since we are dealing with a spherical symmetric problem. In this case, Regge-Wheeler decomposition shows that the even-parity three-dimensional perturbation is $`h_{ij}^{even}(r,\vartheta ,\varphi )=`$

$$diag[H\left(r\right)\left(1\frac{2MG}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right)^1,r^2K\left(r\right),r^2\mathrm{sin}^2\vartheta K\left(r\right)]Y_{l0}(\vartheta ,\varphi ).$$
(58)
In this representation $`H\left(r\right)`$ and $`K\left(r\right)`$ behave as they were scalar fields and the Laplacian restricted to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is

$$\mathrm{}_l=\left(1\frac{2MG}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right)\frac{d^2}{dr^2}+\left(\frac{2r3MG}{r^2}+\frac{Q^2}{r^3}\right)\frac{d}{dr}\frac{l\left(l+1\right)}{r^2}.$$
(59)
The mixed tensor in Eq. $`\left(\text{56}\right)`$ assumes a different form according to whether we are dealing with the magnetic or electric charge.

### A The electric charge contribution

In this case the mixed tensor $`P_j^a`$ becomes

$$P_j^a:=\left(T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta \right)\delta _j^a\frac{\kappa }{2\pi }\left(F_{01}\right)^2\delta _1^a\delta _j^1$$
(60)
and for a generic value of the angular momentum $`L`$, the system $`\left(\text{54}\right)`$ becomes

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\left(\mathrm{}_l\frac{4MG}{r^3}+\frac{10Q_e^2}{r^4}\right)H_l\left(r\right)=E_{l,H}^2H_l\left(r\right)\\ \\ \left(\mathrm{}_l+\frac{2MG}{r^3}\frac{2Q_e^2}{r^4}\right)K_l\left(r\right)=E_{l,K}^2K_l\left(r\right)\end{array},$$
(61)
where $`E_{l,H}^2`$ and $`E_{l,K}^2`$ are the eigenvalues for the $`H_l\left(r\right)`$ field and the $`K_l\left(r\right)`$ field respectively. Defining reduced fields

$$H_l\left(r\right)=\frac{h_l\left(r\right)}{r};K_l\left(r\right)=\frac{k_l\left(r\right)}{r},$$
(62)
and passing to the proper geodesic distance from the throat of the bridge defined by Eq.$`\left(\text{20}\right)`$, the system $`\left(\text{61}\right)`$ becomesThe system is invariant in form if we make the minus choice in Eq.$`\left(\text{20}\right)`$.

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\frac{d^2}{dx^2}h_l\left(x\right)+V_l^+\left(x\right)h_l\left(x\right)=E_l^2h\left(x\right)\\ \\ \frac{d^2}{dx^2}k_l\left(x\right)+V_l^{}\left(x\right)k_l\left(x\right)=E_l^2k\left(x\right),\end{array}$$
(63)
where

$$V_l^{}\left(x\right)=\frac{l\left(l+1\right)}{r^2\left(x\right)}\frac{3MG}{r^3\left(x\right)}\pm \frac{6Q_e^2}{r^4\left(x\right)}+\frac{3Q_e^2}{r^4\left(x\right)}.$$
(64)
When $`rr_+`$ $`x\left(r\right)r`$, then we can approximate the potential with

$$V_l^{}\left(x\right)\frac{l\left(l+1\right)}{x^2}$$
(65)
and the solution for the system $`\left(\text{63}\right)`$ is

$$h_{pl}\left(x\right)=k_{pl}\left(x\right)=\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\left(px\right)j_l\left(px\right),$$
(66)
where $`j_l\left(px\right)`$ is the spherical Bessel function. If we consider flat space, i.e. $`M=Q=0`$, the system $`\left(\text{63}\right)`$ becomes

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\left(\frac{d^2}{dr^2}+\frac{l\left(l+1\right)}{r^2}\right)h_l\left(r\right)=E_l^2h_l\left(r\right)\\ \\ \left(\frac{d^2}{dr^2}+\frac{l\left(l+1\right)}{r^2}\right)k_l\left(r\right)=E_l^2k_l\left(r\right)\end{array},$$
(67)
and the solution is

$$h_{pl}\left(r\right)=k_{pl}\left(r\right)=\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\left(pr\right)j_l\left(pr\right).$$
(68)
On the other hand when $`rr_0>r_+`$

$$x\left(r\right)\sqrt{2\kappa _+\left(rr_+\right)}V_l^{}\left(x\right)\frac{l\left(l+1\right)}{r_0^2}\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}\pm \frac{6Q_e^2}{r_0^4}+\frac{3Q_e^2}{r_0^4}=const,$$
(69)
where $`\kappa _+`$ has been defined in Eq. $`\left(\text{16}\right)`$. However to use the simplicity of Bessel functions for flat and curved space when $`rr_0>r_+`$, we approximate the potential with

$$V_l^{}\left(x\right)=\frac{l\left(l+1\right)}{x^2}\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}\pm \frac{6Q_e^2}{r_0^4}+\frac{3Q_e^2}{r_0^4}.$$
(70)
Thus close to the wormhole throat we experience a potential barrier (potential hole) whose solution, for system $`\left(\text{63}\right)`$ is

$$\{\begin{array}{cc}h_{P_{}l}\left(x\right)=& \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\left(P_{}x\right)j_l\left(P_{}x\right)\\ k_{P_+l}\left(x\right)=& \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\left(P_+x\right)j_l\left(P_+x\right)\end{array}.$$
(71)
$`P_{}`$ is such that $`P_{}^2=E_l^2c_{}^2`$, where\**\**\**Actually a more standard approach of this problem can be considered by means of phase shifts $`\delta _l\left(p\right)`$.††††††This choice is also dictated by the necessity of avoiding that different values of the angular momentum enter in the approximate potential $`V_l^\pm \left(x\right)`$ couple like in Refs..

$$c_{}^2=\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}\pm \frac{6Q_e^2}{r_0^4}+\frac{3Q_e^2}{r_0^4}.$$
(72)
Note that for functions described by Eq.$`\left(\text{66}\right)`$ or Eq.$`\left(\text{71}\right)`$ we have that

$$h_l\left(x\right),k_l\left(x\right)0\text{ when }x\left(r\right)x\left(r_+\right)0.$$
(73)
Thus the propagator becomes

$$K_\pm ^{}(x,y)=\frac{1}{r\left(x\right)r\left(y\right)}\underset{P,l,m}{}\{\begin{array}{c}k_{P_+l}\left(x\right)k_{P_+l}\left(y\right)/\lambda _+\left(P\right)\\ h_{P_{}l}\left(x\right)h_{P_{}l}\left(y\right)/\lambda _{}\left(P\right)\end{array}Y_{l0}(\vartheta ,\varphi )Y_{l0}(\vartheta ^{},\varphi ^{})$$
(74)
$`\lambda _\pm \left(P\right)`$ is referred to the potential function $`V_l^\pm \left(x\right)`$. This is the more general expression for the propagator. Indeed, when one considers flat space or the region far away from the throat $`r_+`$, it is sufficient the substitution of $`P_{}`$ with $`p`$. Inserting Eq.$`\left(\text{74}\right)`$ into Eq.$`\left(\text{52}\right)`$ one gets

$$E(M,Q_e,\lambda )=\frac{1}{2\pi }\underset{p,l}{}\frac{\left(2l+1\right)}{4\pi }\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}\left[\left(16\pi G\right)\lambda _i\left(p\right)+\frac{E_i^2(p,M,Q_e)}{\left(16\pi G\right)\lambda _i\left(p\right)}\right]$$
(75)
where

$$\{\begin{array}{c}E_1^2(p,M,Q_e)=p^2\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}+\frac{9Q_e^2}{r_0^4}\\ E_2^2(p,M,Q_e)=p^2+\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}\frac{3Q_e^2}{r_0^4}\end{array},$$
(76)
$`\lambda _i\left(p\right)`$ are variational parameters corresponding to the eigenvalues for a (graviton) spin-two particle in an external field. By minimizing $`\left(\text{75}\right)`$ with respect to $`\lambda _i\left(p\right)`$ one obtains $`\overline{\lambda }_i\left(p\right)=\left[E_i^2(p,M,Q_e)\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}/\left(16\pi G\right)`$ and

$$E(M,Q_e,\overline{\lambda })=\frac{1}{\pi }\underset{p,l}{}\frac{\left(2l+1\right)}{4\pi }\left[\sqrt{E_1^2(p,M,Q_e)}+\sqrt{E_2^2(p,M,Q_e)}\right]$$
(77)
with

$$p^2+c_{}^2>0,$$
(78)
where we have used definition $`\left(\text{72}\right)`$. We can evaluate the total energy for the electric RN background by replacing the sum with an integral leading to

$$E(M,Q_e)=\frac{V}{4\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑pp^2\left(\sqrt{p^2+c_{}^2}+\sqrt{p^2+c_+^2}\right),$$
(79)
where $`V`$ is the volume localized near the wormhole throat. For flat space we put $`M=Q=0`$ and we get

$$E\left(0\right)=\frac{V}{2\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑pp^3$$
(80)
Now, we are in position to compute the difference between $`\left(\text{79}\right)`$ and $`\left(\text{80}\right)`$. The explicit evaluation of the integrals of Eq.$`\left(\text{79}\right)`$ in the U.V. limit, gives

$$E(M,Q_e)\frac{V}{4\pi ^2}\frac{1}{4}\left[2p^4+p^2\left(c_+^2+c_{}^2\right)\frac{c_+^4}{4}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{p^2}{c_+^2}\right)\frac{c_{}^4}{4}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{p^2}{c_{}^2}\right)\right].$$
(81)
Thus

$`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q_e)=E(M,Q_e)E\left(0\right)`$

$`={\displaystyle \frac{V}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑pp^2\left[\sqrt{p^2+c_{}^2}+\sqrt{p^2+c_+^2}2\sqrt{p^2}\right]`$

$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{4\pi ^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}p^2\left(c_+^2+c_{}^2\right){\displaystyle \frac{c_+^4}{16}}\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{p^2}{c_+^2}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{c_{}^4}{16}}\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{p^2}{c_{}^2}}\right)\right]`$

$$\frac{V}{4\pi ^2}\left[\frac{1}{4}p^2\left(c_+^2+c_{}^2\right)\frac{\left(c_{}^4+c_+^4\right)}{16}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}{\mu ^2}\right)\right],$$
(82)
where we have used the approximation $`p^2>>c_{}^2`$ and a cut-off $`\mathrm{\Lambda }m_p`$ to keep under control the $`UV`$ divergence and we have introduced an arbitrary scale $`\mu `$. In particular for the Schwarzschild case, $`\mu `$ has been determined by the quantity $`3MG/r_0^3=c_M^2`$ and in that case the approximated expression for $`\mathrm{\Delta }E\left(M\right)`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E\left(M\right)\frac{V}{2\pi ^2}\frac{c_M^4}{16}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}{c_M^2}\right)=\frac{V}{32\pi ^2}\left(\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}\right)^2\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{r_0^3\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}{3MG}\right).$$
(83)
Nevertheless, in this paper we would like to establish if a mechanism of space-time foam formation can arise in competition with the foam model created by Schwarzschild wormholes. To this purpose in this case we shall fix as a scale the value $`c_M^2`$ and we define the dimensionless parameter $`\alpha =\left(Q_e/MG\right)`$. Thus Eq. $`\left(\text{82}\right)`$ becomes

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q_e)\frac{V}{4\pi ^2}\mathrm{\Lambda }^4\left[\frac{1}{2}x\alpha _e^2+\frac{1}{16}\left(1+5\alpha _e^44\alpha _e^2\right)x^2\mathrm{ln}x\right]$$
(84)
where we have defined

$$\alpha _e^2=\alpha ^2\frac{MG}{r_0};x=\frac{3MG}{r_0^3\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}.$$
(85)
Since $`MG>Q`$ and since $`r_0>MG>Q`$ then $`0<\alpha _e^2<1`$. In Fig.3, we show the plot of Eq.$`\left(\text{84}\right)`$ for different values of the parameter $`\alpha _e^2`$.

Since only the minimum of $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q_e)`$ is physically relevant, we see that for $`\alpha _e^2=10^1`$, the minimum is positive. This means that the electric field tends to dominate the gravitational attraction and becomes more and more stronger as $`\alpha _e^2`$ approaches the extreme value, i.e. $`MG=Q_e`$. As expected for small values of $`\alpha _e^2`$, the behavior for the energy gap of the Schwarzschild and RN backgrounds with flat space as reference space are very close. Nevertheless, the energy gap of the last one is always higher than the same one computed with the Schwarzschild background. This means that even for very small electric charges, the Casimir energy for RN wormholes is always higher than the Casimir energy for Schwarzschild wormholes.

### B The magnetic charge contribution

For the magnetic case $`P_{j\text{ }}^a`$ is

$$P_j^a:=\kappa \left(T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta \right)\delta _j^a2\left(F_{23}\right)^2\left(\delta _2^a\delta _j^2+\delta _3^a\delta _j^3+\delta _2^a\delta _j^3\right).$$
(86)
Since the last term in previous equation mixes the components $`h_2^2`$ and $`h_3^3`$, we have

$$\left[\left(\mathrm{}_l+\frac{2MG}{r^3}+\frac{6Q_m^2}{r^4}\right)𝐈_2+\frac{4Q_m^2}{r^4}\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 1\\ 1& 0\end{array}\right)\right]\left(\begin{array}{c}h_2^2\\ h_3^3\end{array}\right).$$
(87)
By repeating the same steps of section V A, the system $`\left(\text{54}\right)`$ becomes

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\left(\mathrm{}_l\frac{4MG}{r^3}+\frac{2Q_m^2}{r^4}\right)H\left(r\right)=E_{l,H}^2H\left(r\right)\\ \\ \left(\mathrm{}_l+\frac{2MG}{r^3}+\frac{10Q_m^2}{r^4}\right)K\left(r\right)=E_{l,K}^2K\left(r\right)\end{array},$$
(88)
where we have diagonalized the operator in $`\left(\text{87}\right)`$. Since the diagonalization gives the eigenvalues $`\pm 1`$ with eigenvectors $`\frac{h_2^2\pm h_3^3}{\sqrt{2}}`$ respectively, we have considered only the positive eigenvalue since the negative one has the eigenvector $`\frac{h_2^2h_3^3}{\sqrt{2}}`$ which vanishes because $`h_2^2=h_3^3`$ in Regge-Wheeler representation. Thus following the steps we have used for the electric part, we arrive to

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\frac{d^2}{dx^2}h\left(x\right)+V_l^+\left(x\right)h\left(x\right)=E_l^2h\left(x\right)\\ \\ \frac{d^2}{dx^2}k\left(x\right)+V_l^{}\left(x\right)k\left(x\right)=E_l^2k\left(x\right)\end{array},$$
(89)
where

$$V_l^{}\left(x\right)=\frac{l\left(l+1\right)}{r^2\left(x\right)}\frac{3MG}{r\left(x\right)^3}\frac{4Q_m^2}{r\left(x\right)^4}+\frac{5Q_m^2}{r\left(x\right)^4}.$$
(90)
In analogy with the electric case, we obtain the approximate solutions of system $`\left(\text{89}\right)`$, by restricting the analysis to the sector where $`rr_0>r_+.`$Then

$$\{\begin{array}{cc}h_{P_{}l}\left(x\right)=& \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\left(P_{}x\right)j_l\left(P_{}x\right)\\ k_{P_+l}\left(x\right)=& \sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\left(P_+x\right)j_l\left(P_+x\right)\end{array}.$$
(91)
$`P_{}`$ is such that $`P_{}^2=E_l^2d_{}^2`$, where

$$d_{}^2=\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}\frac{4Q_m^2}{r_0^4}+\frac{5Q_m^2}{r_0^4}.$$
(92)
Finally we arrive to

$$E(M,Q_m,\overline{\lambda })=\frac{V}{4\pi ^2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑pp^2\sqrt{E_i^2(p,M,Q_m)}\text{ }$$
(93)
with

$$\{\begin{array}{c}E_1^2(p,M,Q_m)=p^2\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}+\frac{Q_m^2}{r_0^4}\\ E_2^2(p,M,Q_m)=p^2+\frac{3MG}{r_0^3}+\frac{9Q_m^2}{r_0^4}\end{array},$$
(94)
with the usual condition

$$p^2+d_{}^2>0,$$
(95)
where we have used definition $`\left(\text{92}\right)`$. For the magnetic RN background we get

$$E(M,Q_m)=\frac{V}{4\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑pp^2\left(\sqrt{p^2+d_{}^2}+\sqrt{p^2+d_+^2}\right).$$
(96)
The zero point energy for flat space is given by Eq. $`\left(\text{80}\right)`$, then the Casimir energy is given by Eq. $`\left(\text{82}\right)`$. Proceeding like the electric case, we find

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q_m)\frac{V}{4\pi ^2}\mathrm{\Lambda }^4\left[\frac{5}{6}x\alpha _m^2+\frac{1}{8}\left(1+\frac{41}{9}\alpha _m^4+\frac{4}{3}\alpha _m^2\right)x^2\mathrm{ln}x\right]$$
(97)
where we have defined $`\alpha _m^2=\alpha ^2MG/r_0`$ and $`x`$ is the scale variable we have used for the electric case and $`0<\alpha _m^2<1`$. In Fig.4, we show the plot of Eq.$`\left(\text{97}\right)`$ for different values of the parameter $`\alpha _m^2`$

Even for the magnetic case, we find a behavior of the energy gap similar to the electric one. This means that even in this case, the Casimir energy for RN wormholes is always higher than the Casimir energy for Schwarzschild wormholes.

## VI Summary and Conclusions

In this paper we have considered the possibility of forming a foamy spacetime using a collection of $`N`$ coherent RN wormholes. By applying the same methods used for the Schwarzschild wormholes, we have found that in case of a electric or magnetic potential the Casimir energy is always higher than the one computed for the Schwarzschild case, i.e.

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{RN}(M,Q)>\mathrm{\Delta }E_{flat}^{Schwarzschild}\left(M\right)$$
(98)
. To this purpose to correctly compare such energies the same reference scale has been considered. We would like to remark that for very small electromagnetic field energy contribution, it is the total energy difference between the RN spacetime and flat space which is negative. The single energy contribution of flat space and RN space is strictly positive. Note that this result has been obtained when the number of wormholes is equal to one. Indeed the complete conclusion can be supported when one proofs:

the existence of an unstable mode;

a boundary reduction mechanism coming into play in such a way to stabilize the system.

Nevertheless, the purpose of the paper is to proof that the Casimir energy for RN wormholes is always higher than the Schwarzschild Casimir energy. Since this is the case, it is sufficient to assume the validity of point a) and b) to conclude‡‡‡‡‡‡For the point a), the existence of an instability has been proved in Ref.  only for RN solutions with magnetic charge. As far as we know the case with electric charge seems to be stable. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the AdS4-RN shows such an instability. Note that the result is obtained for every value of $`\alpha _e^2`$ and $`\alpha _m^2`$ s.t. $`0<\begin{array}{c}\alpha _e^2\\ \alpha _m^2\end{array}<1`$. This seems to suggest that a space-time foam formation realized by RN wormholes is suppressed when compared with the foamy space formed by Schwarzschild wormholes. On the other hand one can think to the collection of $`N`$ RN wormholes as an excited state with respect to the collection of $`N`$ Schwarzschild wormholes leading to the conclusion that such a collection can be considered as a good candidate for a possible ground state of a quantum theory of the gravitational field, when compared to a superposition of large $`N`$ RN wormholes.

## VII Acknowledgments

I wish to thank J. D. Bekenstein, R. Brout, M. Cavaglià, V. Frolov, C. Kiefer, P. Spindel and C. Vaz for useful comments and discussions.

## A Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates for RN spacetime

We have defined the RN line element in Eq.$`\left(\text{12}\right)`$. To introduce the Kruskal-Szekeres type coordinates we consider the following transformation

$`ds^2=\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{2MG}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{r^2}}\right)\left[dt^2dr^2\right]+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2`$

$$=\left(1\frac{2MG}{r}+\frac{Q^2}{r^2}\right)dvdu+r^2(u,v)d\mathrm{\Omega }^2,$$
(A1)
where $`v=t+r^{}`$ is the ingoing radial null coordinate and $`u=tr^{}`$ is the outgoing radial null coordinate. The “tortoise coordinate” $`r^{}`$ is defined by

$$dr^{}=\frac{r^2dr}{\left(rr_{}\right)\left(rr_+\right)}$$
(A2)
$$r^{}=r+\frac{1}{2\kappa _+}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\left|rr_+\right|}{r_+}+\frac{1}{2\kappa _{}}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\left|rr_{}\right|}{r_{}}+c,$$
(A3)
where $`\kappa _+`$ and $`\kappa _{}`$ have been defined by Eq. $`\left(\text{16}\right)`$. To avoid singularities we can define Kruskal-Szekeres type coordinates

$$V^+=\mathrm{exp}\kappa _+vU^+=\mathrm{exp}\kappa _+u.$$
(A4)
These coordinates do not cover $`rr_{}`$ because of the coordinate singularity at $`r=r_{}`$ (and $`U^+V^+`$ is complex for $`rr_{}`$), but $`r=r_{}`$ and a similar four regions are covered by the $`(U^{},V^{})`$ Kruskal-Szekeres-type coordinates to this case. Thus, let us define

$$V^{}=\mathrm{exp}\kappa _{}vU^{}=\mathrm{exp}\kappa _{}u.$$
(A5)
For the $`+`$ sign we have

$$U^+V^+=\mathrm{exp}\left(\kappa _+\left(vu\right)\right)=\mathrm{exp}\left(2\kappa _+r^{}\right)=\mathrm{exp}\left(2\kappa _+r\right)\left(\frac{rr_+}{r_+}\right)\left(\frac{rr_{}}{r_{}}\right)^{\frac{\kappa _+}{\kappa }}$$
(A6)
and the respective line element is

$$ds_+^2=\frac{r_+r_{}}{\kappa _+^2}\frac{\mathrm{exp}\left(2\kappa _+r\right)}{r^2}\left(\frac{r_{}}{rr_{}}\right)^{\frac{\kappa _+}{\kappa }1}dU^+dV^++r^2(U^+,V^+)d\mathrm{\Omega }^2,$$
(A7)
while for the $``$ sign we have

$$U^{}V^{}=\mathrm{exp}\left(\kappa _{}\left(vu\right)\right)=\mathrm{exp}\left(2\kappa _{}r^{}\right)=\mathrm{exp}\left(2\kappa _{}r\right)\left(\frac{r_{}r}{r_{}}\right)\left(\frac{r_+r}{r_+}\right)^{\frac{\kappa _{}}{\kappa _+}}$$
(A8)
and the associated line element is

$$ds_{}^2=\frac{r_+r_{}}{\kappa _{}^2}\frac{\mathrm{exp}\left(2\kappa _{}r\right)}{r^2}\left(\frac{r_+}{r_+r}\right)^{\frac{\kappa _{}}{\kappa _+}1}dU^{}dV^{}+r^2(U^{},V^{})d\mathrm{\Omega }^2.$$
(A9)
The conformal Penrose diagram of the RN space is shown in Fig.2.

## B The Hamiltonian contribution of the Electromagnetic field

The form of the hamiltonian for the electromagnetic field can be obtained with the same method used for the pure gravitational field. Let $`u_\alpha `$ a normalized time-like vector field s.t. $`u_\alpha u^\alpha =1`$. The form of $`_M`$ comes from the Einstein-Maxwell action and it can be written as

$$_M=\sqrt{{}_{}{}^{3}g}T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta ,$$
(B1)
where

$$T_{\alpha \beta }=\frac{1}{4\pi }\left[F_{\alpha \gamma }F_\beta ^\gamma \frac{1}{4}g_{\alpha \beta }F_{\gamma \delta }F^{\gamma \delta }\right]$$
(B2)
and $`F_{\alpha \gamma }=_\alpha A_\gamma _\gamma A_\alpha `$. $`A_\alpha `$ is the electromagnetic potential which, in the case of a pure electric field assumes the form $`A_\alpha =(Q_e/r,0,0,0)`$ while in the case of pure magnetic field, the form is $`A_\alpha =(0,Q_m\mathrm{sin}\theta ,0,0)`$. $`Q_e`$ and $`Q_m`$ are the electric and magnetic charge respectively. Both of them contribute in the same way to the gravitational potential of Eq. $`\left(\text{13}\right)`$. Since we are interested in electric type R.N. metrics, the on-shell contribution of $`T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta `$ is

$$T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta =\frac{1}{8\pi }\left(F_{01}\right)^2=\frac{1}{8\pi }\frac{Q_e^2}{r^4}.$$
(B3)
Nevertheless, this is not the complete contribution when gravitational fluctuations come into play. Indeed up to second order in $`h_{ij}`$, one gets

$$_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x_M=2\kappa _\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x\sqrt{{}_{}{}^{3}\overline{g}}\left[\frac{1}{4}h_{ij}h^{ij}\left(T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta \right)+T_{\alpha \beta }^{\left(2\right)}u^\alpha u^\beta \right],$$
(B4)
where $`T_{\alpha \beta }^{\left(2\right)}u^\alpha u^\beta =\frac{1}{8\pi }\left(F_{01}\right)^2h_1^1h_1^1`$. Thus Eq. $`\left(\text{B4}\right)`$ becomes

$$_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x_M=\frac{2\kappa }{8\pi }_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x\sqrt{{}_{}{}^{3}\overline{g}}\left[\frac{3}{4}h_1^1h_1^1\left(F_{01}\right)^2+\frac{1}{4}h_2^2h_2^2\left(F_{01}\right)^2+\frac{1}{4}h_3^3h_3^3\left(F_{01}\right)^2\right].$$
(B5)
On the other hand, when we consider the magnetic charge, the on-shell contribution of $`T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta `$ is

$$T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta =\frac{1}{8\pi }\left(F_{23}\right)^2=\frac{1}{8\pi }\frac{Q_m^2}{r^4}.$$
(B6)
However for the magnetic part, one gets

$$T_{\alpha \beta }u^\alpha u^\beta F_{ij}F^{ij}=F_{ij}F_{kl}g^{ik}g^{jl}$$
(B7)
then to second order in $`h_{ij}`$ one obtains

$$_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x_M=\frac{2\kappa }{16\pi }_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x\sqrt{{}_{}{}^{3}\overline{g}}\left[\frac{1}{4}h_1^1h_1^1\left(F_{23}\right)^2\frac{7}{4}h_2^2h_2^2\left(F_{23}\right)^2\frac{7}{4}h_3^3h_3^3\left(F_{23}\right)^2\right].$$
(B8)
## C Action and Hamiltonian

Here we follow Ref. to extract the form of the Hamiltonian in presence of a bifurcation surface with boundaries. We will consider for simplicity the case of a single horizon, like the Schwarzschild one, the generalization for the Reissner-Nordström case is straightforward. We consider two spacelike Cauchy surfaces $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\prime \prime }`$. The region lying between $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\prime \prime }`$ consists of two wedges $`M_+`$ and $`M_{}`$ intersecting at a two-dimensional surface $`S_0`$. The symbol $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{t(\pm )}`$ denotes the part of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ located in $`M_\pm `$. We also denote those parts of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\prime \prime }`$ which are the spacelike boundaries of the wedges $`M_\pm `$ as $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\pm ^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\pm ^{\prime \prime }`$. The lapse function $`N`$ is positive (negative) at $`M_+`$ ($`M_{}`$) and equals zero at the bifurcation surface. The vector $`u^\mu =N_\mu t`$ is future oriented in $`M_+`$ and past oriented in $`M_{}`$. The metric is described in Eq.$`\left(\text{22}\right)`$ and the covariant form of the gravitational action for this foliation with fixed three-geometry at the boundaries of $`M`$ is

$`S={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa }}{\displaystyle _{M_+}}d^4x\sqrt{g}\mathrm{}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa }}{\displaystyle _{t^{}(+)}^{t^{\prime \prime }}}d^3x\sqrt{g^{\left(3\right)}}K{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa }}{\displaystyle _{B_+}}d^3x\sqrt{\gamma }\mathrm{\Theta }S_{0(+)}`$

$$\frac{1}{2\kappa }_M_{}d^4x\sqrt{g}\mathrm{}+\frac{1}{\kappa }_{t^{}()}^{t^{\prime \prime }}d^3x\sqrt{g^{\left(3\right)}}K\frac{1}{\kappa }_B_{}d^3x\sqrt{\gamma }\mathrm{\Theta }S_{0()}.$$
(C1)
$`\mathrm{}`$ denotes the four-dimensional scalar curvature, $`\kappa 8\pi G`$, and

$`\sqrt{g}=|N|\sqrt{h}`$

$$\sqrt{\gamma }=|N|\sqrt{\sigma },$$
(C2)
where $`\sigma `$ is the determinant of the two-dimensional metric $`\sigma _{ab}`$. $`K`$ is the extrinsic curvature of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ as a surface embedded in $`M`$, while $`k`$ is the extrinsic curvature of the boundaries $`S`$ embedded on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Then the trace of the extrinsic curvature of the boundaries $`B`$ as surfaces embedded in $`M`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Theta }=kn_\beta a^\beta ,$$
(C3)
where $`a^\mu =u^\alpha _\alpha u^\mu `$ is the acceleration of the timelike normal $`u^\mu `$. $`B`$ is a three-dimensional timelike boundary such that $`B=B_+B_{}`$. The spacelike normal $`n^i`$ to the three-dimensional boundaries $`B`$ is assumed to be outward pointing at $`B_+`$, inward pointing at $`B_{}`$. It is assumed that the integrations are taken over the coordinates $`x^\mu `$ which have the same orientation as the canonical coordinates $`(t,x,\theta ,\varphi )`$ of the foliation. The negative sign for the integration over $`M_{}`$ reflects the fact that the canonical coordinates are left oriented in this region. Besides the volume term, the action $`S`$ contains also boundary terms. The notation $`_{t^{}(\pm )}^{t^{\prime \prime }}`$ represents an integral over the three-boundary $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\pm `$ at $`t^{\prime \prime }`$ minus an integral over the three-boundary $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\pm `$ at $`t^{}`$. Under a $`3+1`$ spacetime split, the four-dimensional scalar curvature is

$$\mathrm{}=R^{\left(3\right)}+K_{\mu \nu }K^{\mu \nu }(K)^22_\mu (Ku^\mu +a^\mu ),$$
(C4)
where $`R`$ denotes the scalar curvature of the three-dimensional spacelike hypersurface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. By the use of Gauss’ theorem, the conditions

$$un|_B=0,ua=0,uu=1,nn=1,$$
(C5)
and Eqns. (C1)-(C3) and (C4), one can rewrite the total action in the form

$`S={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa }}{\displaystyle _{M_+}}d^4x\sqrt{g}\left[R+K_{\mu \nu }K^{\mu \nu }(K)^2\right]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa }}{\displaystyle _{B_+}}d^3x\sqrt{\gamma }k`$

$$\frac{1}{2\kappa }_M_{}d^4x\sqrt{g}\left[R+K_{\mu \nu }K^{\mu \nu }(K)^2\right]\frac{1}{\kappa }_B_{}d^3x\sqrt{\gamma }k.$$
(C6)
The action for stationary solutions finally becomes

$$S=H𝑑t,$$
(C7)
with the gravitational Hamiltonian $`H`$ given by

$$H=_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3x\left(N+N^i_i\right)+\frac{1}{\kappa }_{S_+}d^2x\sqrt{\sigma }Nk\frac{1}{\kappa }_S_{}d^2x\sqrt{\sigma }Nk.$$
(C8)