In this paper, we study the physical properties and characteristics of matter forming thin accretion disks in static and spherically symmetric wormhole spacetimes. In particular, the time averaged energy flux, the disk temperature, and the emission spectra of the accretion disks are obtained for these exotic geometries and are compared with the Schwarzschild solution. It is shown that more energy is emitted from the disk in a wormhole geometry than in the case of the Schwarzschild potential and the conversion efficiency of the accreted mass into radiation is more than a factor of 2 higher for the wormholes than for static black holes. These effects in the disk radiation are confirmed in the radial profiles of temperature corresponding to theses flux distributions, and in the emission spectrum $\omega L(\omega )$ of the accretion disks. We conclude that specific signatures appear in the electromagnetic spectrum, thus leading to the possibility of distinguishing wormhole geometries by using astrophysical observations of the emission spectra from accretion disks.

• Received 25 August 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.78.084005