Wormholes from heavy operator statistics in AdS/CFT

TL;DR

This paper constructs Euclidean AdS wormhole solutions that statistically describe heavy operator correlations in CFTs, linking bulk geometries to operator ensemble properties and symmetry violations.

Contribution

It introduces new wormhole solutions that encode the statistical behavior of heavy operators in AdS/CFT, connecting geometry with operator ensemble averages.

Findings

Wormholes reproduce the statistical features of heavy operator correlations.

Semiclassical path integrals encode microscopic operator details.

Wormholes contribute to non-perturbative symmetry violations.

Abstract

We construct higher dimensional Euclidean AdS wormhole solutions that reproduce the statistical description of the correlation functions of an ensemble of heavy CFT operators. We consider an operator which effectively backreacts on the geometry in the form of a thin shell of dust particles. Assuming dynamical chaos in the form of the ETH ansatz, we demonstrate that the semiclassical path integral provides an effective statistical description of the microscopic features of the thin shell operator in the CFT. The Euclidean wormhole solutions provide microcanonical saddlepoint contributions to the cumulants of the correlation functions over the ensemble of operators. We finally elaborate on the role of these wormholes in the context of non-perturbative violations of bulk global symmetries in AdS/CFT.