Exotica ex nihilo: Traversable wormholes & non-singular black holes from the vacuum of quadratic gravity

Understand

We present new traversable wormhole and non-singular black hole solutions in pure, scale-free $R^2$ gravity.

• These exotic solutions require no null energy condition violating or "exotic" matter and are supported only by the vacuum of the theory.
• It is well known that $f(R)$ theories of gravity may be recast as dual theories in the Einstein frame.
• The solutions we present are found when the conformal transformation required to move to the dual frame is singular.