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Mechanism of wormhole-contribution cancellation in AdS/CFT superselection sectors

Determine the mechanism by which Euclidean axion wormhole contributions cancel in anti–de Sitter/conformal field theory (AdS/CFT) in order to resolve the factorization paradox, specifically within each superselection sector labeled by the discrete axion flux Q, given that axion–saxion wormholes are perturbatively stable.

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Background

The paper establishes that spherically symmetric Euclidean wormholes sourced by an axion and massless dilaton (saxion) are perturbatively stable under all modes. In the context of AdS/CFT, resolving the factorization paradox has been argued to require exact cancellation of wormhole contributions, often framed as the baby universe hypothesis.

Given the stability result, the authors highlight a tension: if wormholes are stable, it is unclear how the requisite cancellation occurs, particularly when considering superselection sectors distinguished by discrete axion flux values. This raises a specific interpretive question about path-integral saddle contributions in each charge sector.

References

Further, for Euclidean axion wormholes one may expect that this cancellation should happen within each superselection sector separately, labelled by the discrete axion fluxes Q. The perturbative stability of axion wormholes, even in the presence of a dilaton, means that it remains very much unclear how this is realized.

— Stability of Axion-Saxion wormholes (2405.02072 - Hertog et al., 3 May 2024) in Section 5 (Conclusions)