Notes on wormhole existence in scalar-tensor and F(R) gravity

Some recent papers have claimed the existence of static, spherically symmetric wormhole solutions to gravitational field equations in the absence of ghost (or phantom) degrees of freedom. We show that in some such cases the solutions in question are actually not of wormhole nature while in cases where a wormhole is obtained, the effective gravitational constant Geff is negative in some region of space, i.e., the graviton becomes a ghost. In particular, it is confirmed that there are no vacuum wormhole solutions of the Brans-Dicke theory with zero potential and the coupling constant ω > −3/2, except for the case ω = 0; in the latter case, Geff < 0 in the region beyond the throat. The same is true for wormhole solutions of F(R) gravity: special wormhole solutions are only possible if F(R) contains an extremum at which Geff changes its sign.