Tunnelling to holographic traversable wormholes

Abstract

We study nonperturbative effects of quantum gravity in a system consisting of a coupled pair of holographic CFTs. The AdS$_4$/CFT$_3$ system has three possible ground states: two copies of empty AdS, a pair of extremal AdS black holes, and an eternal AdS traversable wormhole. We give a recipe for calculating transition rates via gravitational instantons and test it by calculating the emission rate of radiation shells from a black hole. We calculate the nucleation rate of a traversable wormhole between a pair of AdS-RN black holes in the canonical and microcanonical ensembles. Our results give predictions of nonpertubative quantum gravity that can be tested in a holographic simulation.