Wormholes with Ends of the World
Abstract
We study classical wormhole solutions in 3D gravity with end-of-the-world (EOW) branes, conical defects, kinks, and punctures. These solutions compute statistical averages of an ensemble of boundary conformal field theories (BCFTs) related to universal asymptotics of OPE data extracted from the 2D conformal bootstrap. Conical defects connect BCFT bulk operators; branes join BCFT boundary intervals with identical boundary conditions; kinks (1D defects along branes) link BCFT boundary operators; and punctures (0D defects) are endpoints where conical defects terminate on branes. We provide evidence for a correspondence between the gravity theory and the ensemble. In particular, the agreement of the -function dependence results from an underlying topological aspect of the on-shell EOW brane action, from which a BCFT analogue of the Schlenker-Witten theorem also follows.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.12278,
title = {Wormholes with Ends of the World},
author = {Diandian Wang and Zhencheng Wang and Zixia Wei},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.12278},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
61 pages + references, many figures; v2: typos and small errors fixed, more references added; v3: matched to the published version in JHEP