Scalar probes on wormholes in Lovelock theories with unique vacuum

Abstract

In this paper we present a new family of wormhole geometries in Lovelock theories with a unique vacuum, and study their stability under scalar field perturbations. As the solutions already known in the literature for Chern-Simons gravity on AdS, the new wormholes are characterized by a single integration constant ${\rho }_0$, that parameterizes the contribution to the mass coming from each boundary, which cancel each other, leading to a new example of "mass without mass". The stability of these new configurations, as well as other previously constructed in the literature is explored under scalar field perturbations. The stability is ensured provided the mass of the scalar perturbation is above a deformed Breitenlohner-Freedman bound which is sensitive to the value of ${\rho }_0$.

V3: 22 pages, many figures. New results include: a) construction of wormholes in Lovelock theories with unique vacuum in arbitrary even dimension b) New wormhole geometries in arbitrary dimension, their mass in dimension five and the analysis of scalar and geodesic probes on the new geometries. V4: To appear in PRD https://journals.aps.org/prd/accepted/28074Q9eEb111635e58d92335972c11cc4f1a50fe