Filtering out Erratic Observables: Wormholes from Gauging Nonlocal Symmetries

Abstract

The wormhole contribution to the gravitational path integral may be interpreted as smooth remnant of correlations among the erratic large-$N$ behaviors of dual CFTs. In this work, we investigate this idea in (2+1)-dimensional gravity. We show that one-sided boundary gravitons are intrinsically incomplete in the sense that the associated observable algebra has a nontrivial center regardless of choices of boundary conditions. Based on asymptotic symmetries, we bootstrap a general Poisson bracket to construct completions of the boundary gravitons. In the simplest completion, the commutant of the boundary graviton observable algebra is given by an observable algebra of monodromy data which we interpret as an effective description of one-sided black holes. We show that, to describe Lorentzian multi-boundary wormholes, only the monodromy data with a positivity restriction is needed. The positivity restriction results in emergent erratic large-$N$ behaviors for some observables. We filter out the erratic observables by restricting to a subspace on which they act trivially. The monodromy observables generate nonlocal symmetries lack of corresponding local currents. We show that gauging the nonlocal symmetries is equivalent to filtering out the erratic observables. For one CFT, gauging the nonlocal symmetries at the quantum level removes all black hole states. Filtering the partition function of CFTs leads to an apparent ensemble averaging. For two CFTs, a Hilbert subspace describing wormholes survives after gauging global part of the nonlocal symmetries. The filtered partition function of the two CFTs is an ensemble average over quantum gates entangling the monodromy degrees of freedom of the two CFTs. The correlation between the erratic observables of the two CFTs is preserved, which contributes to the filtered partition function as a wormhole term.