We study conical defect geometries in the SL(N) Chern-Simons formulation of
higher spin gauge theories in AdS_3. We argue that (for N\geq 4) there are
special values of the deficit angle for which these geometries are actually
smooth configurations of the underlying theory. We also exhibit a gauge in
which these geometries can be viewed as wormholes interpolating between two
distinct asymptotically AdS_3 spacetimes. Remarkably, the spectrum of smooth
SL(N,C) solutions, after an appropriate analytic continuation, exactly matches
that of the so-called "light primaries" in the minimal model W_N CFTs at finite
N. This gives a candidate bulk interpretation of the latter states in the
holographic duality proposed in [1].Comment: 38 page
