On wormholes in the moduli space of surfaces

Abstract

We study a certain wormholing phenomenon that takes place in the Kollár--Shepherd-Barron--Alexeev (KSBA) compactification of the moduli space of surfaces of general type. It occurs because of the appearance of particular extremal P-resolutions in surfaces on the KSBA boundary. We state a general wormhole conjecture, and we prove it for a wide range of cases. At the end, we discuss some topological properties and open questions.