Flat wormholes from straight cosmic strings

TL;DR

This paper explores how certain cosmic string configurations can be extended into wormhole geometries, revealing that these wormholes tend to lengthen space travel and discussing potential observational signatures.

Contribution

It provides an analytical extension of static cosmic string metrics into wormhole spacetimes and analyzes their geometry and potential observational signatures.

Findings

Wormholes tend to lengthen space travel.

Single and double cosmic string configurations can generate asymptotically Minkowskian wormholes.

Possible observational signatures are briefly discussed.

Abstract

We describe the analytical extension of certain static cylindrical multi--cosmic string metrics to wormhole spacetimes with only one region at spatial infinity, and investigate in detail the geometry of asymptotically Minkowskian wormhole spacetimes generated by one or two cosmic strings. We find that such wormholes tend to lengthen rather than shorten space travel. Possible signatures of these wormholes are briefly discussed.