Wormholes without averaging

Abstract: Spacetime wormholes have contributed a lot to recent understanding of quantum black hole physics, but they lead to puzzles. One way to resolve the puzzles is to interpret the wormholes as computing an average over theories. But what happens if we don't average? Are the wormholes still there? We will discuss this in a very simple model, a reduction of the SYK quantum mechanics model. After averaging over couplings, the collective field description contains "wormhole" solutions. We show that the wormhole solutions survive intact in the non-averaged theory, but there are also new "half wormhole" contributions from elsewhere in the integration space.

HEP - theory

Audience: researchers in the topic

Rencontres Théoriciennes

Series comments: Description: Bi-weekly meeting of string theorists in greater Paris