A 10d construction of Euclidean axion wormholes in flat and AdS space

TL;DR

This paper constructs explicit 10-dimensional Euclidean axion wormhole solutions in flat and AdS spaces, demonstrating their parametric control and exploring their holographic duals, thus advancing understanding of quantum gravity and holography.

Contribution

First explicit 10d lifts of Euclidean axion wormholes in supergravity and AdS spaces, including new solutions in massive IIA and IIB with holographic duals.

Findings

Wormholes can be tuned into controlled supergravity regimes.

Explicit solutions found in massive IIA on S^3×S^3 and IIB on T^{1,1}.

Wormholes violate operator positivity, indicating subtleties in holographic correlators.

Abstract

Euclidean wormhole geometries sourced by axions and dilatons are puzzling objects in quantum gravity. From one side of the wormhole to the other, the scalar fields traverse a few Planck lengths in field space and so corrections from the UV might potentially affect the consistency of the solution, even when the wormholes are large. Motivated by this, we carry out the first explicit 10d lifts of regular Euclidean axion wormholes. We start off with the lift of Giddings-Strominger wormholes in $N=8$ Euclidean supergravity over a 6-torus to 10d type IIA supergravity and find the solution can be everywhere tuned into the parametrically controlled supergravity regime. Secondly, we construct explicit wormholes in AdS spaces and find them again to be under parametric control. We find the first wormhole solutions in massive type IIA on $S^3\times S^3$ and in type IIB on $T^{1,1}$. The latter has an explicit holographic dual, and similar to the earlier constructions in $AdS_5 \times S^5/Z_k$, the wormholes violate operator positivity since $Tr(F\pm{\star F})^2<0$. This puzzle might arise from subtleties related to computing holographic $n$-point functions in the presence of multiple boundaries.