A 10d construction of Euclidean axion wormholes in flat and AdS space

Abstract

Abstract Euclidean wormhole geometries sourced by axions and dilatons are puzzling objects in quantum gravity. From one side of the wormhole to the other, the scalar fields traverse a few Planck lengths in field space and so corrections from the UV might potentially affect the consistency of the solution, even when the wormholes are large. Motivated by this, we carry out the first explicit 10d lifts of regular Euclidean axion wormholes. We start off with the lift of Giddings-Strominger wormholes in $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 8 Euclidean supergravity over a 6-torus to 10d type IIA supergravity and find the solution can be everywhere tuned into the parametrically controlled supergravity regime. Secondly, we construct explicit wormholes in AdS spaces and find them again to be under parametric control. We find the first wormhole solutions in massive type IIA on S3 × S3 and in type IIB on T1,1. The latter has an explicit holographic dual, and similar to the earlier constructions in AdS5 × S5/ℤk, the wormholes violate operator positivity since Tr(F ± ⋆ F)2< 0. This puzzle might arise from subtleties related to computing holographic n-point functions in the presence of multiple boundaries.