Mathematical and Theoretical Physics Seminar: Zhencheng Wang (UIUC), "Axion wormholes and the gravitational path integral"
Feb 26, 2026 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Loomis 464
- Sponsor
- Department of Physics
- Speaker
- Zhencheng Wang
- Contact
- Thierry Ramais
- ramais@illinois.edu
Abstract: In AdS/CFT, the existence of spacetime wormholes poses a factorization puzzle for multi-boundary partition functions. In this talk, I will discuss whether Euclidean axion wormholes contribute to this puzzle by studying their relevance in the Lorentzian gravitational path integral, defined by integrating over all real Lorentz-signature spacetimes. We specifically study the integral over the wormhole throat area, and find that such wormholes are subdominant to a UV-sensitive endpoint in 2+1 dimensions, but they dominate the path integral in 1+1 dimensional JT gravity. This talk is based on 2601.02507 and 2601.09932.