Bridging Worldsheet CFTs and Wormholes

Abstract

I provide multiple examples of conformal field theories (CFTs) on the worldsheet that describe string propagation in target space wormholes connecting two disjoint asymptotic manifolds. The worldsheet approach goes beyond the framework of supergravity by incorporating wormholes for which the size of the throat is comparable to the string scale. Typically, strongly coupled CFTs describe these stringy wormholes, which include Euclidean wormholes, double cones, and Einstein-Rosen bridges. Finally, I interpret a certain conformal manifold that contains an $\text{SU}(2{)}_k\times U(1)$ Wess-Zumino-Witten model as mediating a transition between a closed Universe and a wormhole.

20 pages, 2 figures. V2: added references, corrected typos, edited discussion about the double cone solution and dimension of the Hilbert space of the closed cosmology. V3: corrected EAdS2 subsection 2.2, edited the double-cone subsection 2.3 - added a comment about an instability to strings winding Lorentzian time, added references and acknowledgments. Matches a published version in JHEP

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