English

Discreteness without symmetry breaking: a theorem

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-11-09 v1

Abstract

This paper concerns sprinklings into Minkowski space (Poisson processes). It proves that there exists no equivariant measurable map from sprinklings to spacetime directions (even locally). Therefore, if a discrete structure is associated to a sprinkling in an intrinsic manner, then the structure will not pick out a preferred frame, locally or globally. This implies that the discreteness of a sprinkled causal set will not give rise to ``Lorentz breaking'' effects like modified dispersion relations. Another consequence is that there is no way to associate a finite-valency graph to a sprinkling consistently with Lorentz invariance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0605006,
  title  = {Discreteness without symmetry breaking: a theorem},
  author = {Luca Bombelli and Joe Henson and Rafael D. Sorkin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0605006},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages, laTeX

R2 v1 2026-07-22T12:45:13.796Z