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Wormholes in Quantum Mechanics

High Energy Physics - Theory 2021-05-06 v1

Abstract

We introduce a geometric path integral definition of wormhole partition functions in a general class of 1D quantum systems obtained by quantizing a phase space. We compute the wormhole partition function in a semi-classical limit and in some simple examples. The partition function of the n-fold wormhole is found to be identical to the n-th Renyi entropy of a thermal mixed state of the doubled system. This mixed state incorporates three types of quantum statistical behavior: classically correlated, quantum entangled, and classically uncorrelated. We apply our prescription to 2D CFTs with Virasoro symmetry and recover the holographic dual formulation in terms of AdS3 gravity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.02129,
  title  = {Wormholes in Quantum Mechanics},
  author = {Herman Verlinde},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.02129},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

15 pages plus Appendix, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:48:26.075Z