From black holes to wormholes in higher spin gravity (TIFX04-17-29)

Background Conformal transformations change the scale but preserve angles, properties well-known from analytic transformations of complex functions. Theories possessing conformal symmetries currently attract a lot of interest in research and arise in many different contexts: they are a fundamental ingredient in string/M theory (M for membrane) and play a crucial for our understanding of phase transitions in condensed matter systems, and appear in recent approaches to high Tc superconductivity, the fractional quantum Hall effect and many other strongly coupled systems. Such systems are also analyzed today using AdS/CFT where higher spin generalizations of gravity are a very hot subject. Most of the above physical systems are three-dimensional where Chern-Simons topological theory often plays a key role.