Wormhole cosmic strings

TL;DR

This paper constructs and extends multi-wormhole solutions in lower and higher dimensions within a gravitating sigma model, exploring their properties and the conditions for forming Wheeler wormholes with cosmic string sources.

Contribution

It introduces regular multi-wormhole solutions in three, four, and five dimensions and discusses the conditions for forming Wheeler wormholes via mouth identification.

Findings

Wormhole solutions are regular and extendable to higher dimensions.

Wheeler wormholes can be formed with cosmic string sources under specific conditions.

Solutions are flat outside sources and can be asymptotically Minkowskian.

Abstract

We construct regular multi-wormhole solutions to a gravitating $\sigma$ model in three space-time dimensions, and extend these solutions to cylindrical traversable wormholes in four and five dimensions. We then discuss the possibility of identifying wormhole mouths in pairs to give rise to Wheeler wormholes. Such an identification is consistent with the original field equations only in the absence of the $\sigma$-model source, but with possible naked cosmic string sources. The resulting Wheeler wormhole space-times are flat outside the sources and may be asymptotically Minkowskian.