Abstract
We show that Euclidean axion wormholes in theories of gravity coupled to a single axion have several independent inhomogeneous perturbations that lower the Euclidean action. Our analysis relies on a judiciously chosen gauge-invariant variable which makes the negative mode structure about axion wormholes transparent. Perturbations lowering the action are concentrated in the neck region and exist for wormholes in flat space and in AdS. Their presence means axion wormholes are not relevant saddle points of the functional integral in quantum gravity. This resolves the paradoxes associated with these solutions from the viewpoint of AdS/CFT.
- Received 1 February 2019
- Revised 28 May 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.081302
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society