Bridging worldsheet CFTs and wormholes

Abstract

A bstract I provide multiple examples of conformal field theories (CFTs) on the world-sheet 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 SU(2) k × U (1) Wess-Zumino-Witten model as mediating a transition between a closed Universe and a wormhole.