A menagerie of wormholes and cosmologies in the gravitational path integral

A bstract We analyse a variety of Euclidean saddles in the gravitational path integral, with asymptotic AdS boundary conditions, in a class of Einstein-Scalar-Maxwell models. These include single boundary solutions, usual and wineglass wormholes, as well as more exotic (quasi)-oscillatory saddles. Our construction shows how an unbound number of oscillations gets tamed, when flat directions of the potential get lifted. We find several interesting phase transitions between these solutions. The Euclidean wormhole backgrounds can be analytically continued to Lorentzian FLRW universes. Some of them contain an early period of inflation. We delineate the conditions under which they can be the dominant saddles in the gravitational path integral and use them to estimate ratios of probabilities for different cosmological outcomes.

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of High Energy Physics
Published
2026-06-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep06(2026)171
Primary Topic
Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

A menagerie of wormholes and cosmologies in the gravitational path integral

Ioannis D. Gialamas, Olga Papadoulaki, Panos Betzios, Paul Ghiringhelli
Journal of High Energy Physics
Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
article

A menagerie of wormholes and cosmologies in the gravitational path integral

Ioannis D. Gialamas, Olga Papadoulaki, Panos Betzios, Paul Ghiringhelli
article en

Abstract

A bstract We analyse a variety of Euclidean saddles in the gravitational path integral, with asymptotic AdS boundary conditions, in a class of Einstein-Scalar-Maxwell models. These include single boundary solutions, usual and wineglass wormholes, as well as more exotic (quasi)-oscillatory saddles. Our construction shows how an unbound number of oscillations gets tamed, when flat directions of the potential get lifted. We find several interesting phase transitions between these solutions. The Euclidean wormhole backgrounds can be analytically continued to Lorentzian FLRW universes. Some of them contain an early period of inflation. We delineate the conditions under which they can be the dominant saddles in the gravitational path integral and use them to estimate ratios of probabilities for different cosmological outcomes.

Journal of High Energy PhysicsVol. 2026(6)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), École Polytechnique (FR), Ghent University Hospital (BE), National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics (EE)
Openalex Percentile: Top 5%
Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
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