Strings on AdS Wormholes

TL;DR

This paper studies the behavior of open strings on AdS wormholes in Gauss-Bonnet gravity, revealing how charges interact within and across dual field theories, including Coulomb and confining potentials, and explores dynamics at critical speeds.

Contribution

It demonstrates novel string configurations and charge interactions in AdS wormholes, including phase transitions between Coulomb and confining behaviors, and extends findings to supergravity backgrounds without higher-derivative terms.

Findings

Charges in the same field theory exhibit Coulomb interaction at small separation.

Charges in different theories show confining potential when separated widely.

A critical speed limits the co-location of moving charges in different theories.

Abstract

We consider the behavior of open strings on AdS wormholes in Gauss-Bonnet theory, which are the Gauss-Bonnet gravity duals of a pair of field theories. A string with both endpoints on the same side of the wormhole describes two charges within the same field theory, which exhibit Coulomb interaction for small separation. On the other hand, a string extending through the wormhole describes two charges which live in different field theories, and they exhibit a spring-like confining potential. A transition occurs when there is a pair of charges present within each field theory: for small separation each pair of charges exhibits Coulomb interaction, while for large separation the charges in the different field theories pair up and exhibit confinement. Two steadily-moving charges in different field theories can occupy the same location provided that their speed is less than a critical speed, which also plays the role of a subluminal speed limit. However, for some wormhole backgrounds, charges moving at the critical speed cannot occupy the same location and energy is transferred from the leading charge to the lagging one. We also show that strings on AdS wormholes in supergravity theories without higher-derivative curvature terms can exhibit these properties as well.