Quantum versions of Carlini-Mijić wormholes

Abstract

We consider the quantum analogues of wormholes obtained by Carlini and Mijić (CM), who analytically continued closed universe models. To obtain wormholes when the strong energy condition ($γ>2/3$) is satisfied, we are able to simplify the Wheeler-DeWitt (WDW) equation by using an equivalent scalar potential which is a function of the scale factor. Such wormholes are found to be consistent with the Hawking-Page (HP) conjecture for quantum wormholes as solutions of the WDW equation. In addition to the CM type wormholes, for a scalar field realization of the potential in the WDW equation we also obtain quantum wormholes when the strong energy condition is violated. This violation can be up to an arbitrary large distance from the wormhole throat, before the violation eventually has to be relaxed in order to have a flat Euclidean space time. These results give support to the claim of HP that wormhole solutions are a fairly general property of the WDW equation. However, by allowing such solutions one might be precluding other more important properties such as a Lorentzian behaviour and a possible inflationary earlier stage of our universe.