Related papers: Dimensional reduction in causal set gravity
We explore the idea of asymptotic silence in causal set theory and find that causal sets approximated by continuum spacetimes exhibit behaviour akin to asymptotic silence. We make use of an intrinsic definition of spatial distance between…
We investigate the behavior of small subsets of causal sets that approximate Minkowski space in three, four, and five dimensions, and show that their effective dimension decreases smoothly at small distances. The details of the short…
If gravity is asymptotically safe, operators will exhibit anomalous scaling at the ultraviolet fixed point in a way that makes the theory effectively two-dimensional. A number of independent lines of evidence, based on different approaches…
We calculate the spectral dimension for a nonperturbative lattice approach to quantum gravity, known as causal dynamical triangulations (CDT), showing that the dimension of spacetime smoothly decreases from approximately 4 on large distance…
We evaluate the spectral dimension in causal set quantum gravity by simulating random walks on causal sets. In contrast to other approaches to quantum gravity, we find an increasing spectral dimension at small scales. This observation can…
Several lines of evidence hint that quantum gravity at very small distances may be effectively two-dimensional. I summarize the evidence for such ``spontaneous dimensional reduction,'' and suggest an additional argument coming from the…
Hints from a number of different approaches to quantum gravity point to a phenomenon of "spontaneous dimensional reduction" to two spacetime dimensions near the Planck scale. I examine the physical meaning of the term "dimension" in this…
Within the causal dynamical triangulations approach to the quantization of gravity, striking evidence has emerged for the dynamical reduction of spacetime dimension on sufficiently small scales. Specifically, the spectral dimension…
In recent years several approaches to quantum gravity have found evidence for a scale dependent spectral dimension of space-time varying from four at large scales to two at small scales of order of the Planck length. The first evidence came…
An important probe of quantum geometry is its spectral dimension, defined via a spatial diffusion process. In this work we study the spectral dimension of a ``spatial hypersurface'' in a manifoldlike causal set using the induced spatial…
A number of very different approaches to quantum gravity contain a common thread, a hint that spacetime at very short distances becomes effectively two dimensional. I review this evidence, starting with a discussion of the physical meaning…
Four-dimensional Quantum Einstein Gravity (QEG) is likely to be an asymptotically safe theory which is applicable at arbitrarily small distance scales. On sub-Planckian distances it predicts that spacetime is a fractal with an effective…
We show that vacuum fluctuations of the stress-energy tensor in two-dimensional dilaton gravity lead to a sharp focusing of light cones near the Planck scale, effectively breaking space up into a large number of causally disconnected…
Employing standard results from spectral geometry, we provide strong evidence that in the classical limit the ground state of three-dimensional causal dynamical triangulations is de Sitter spacetime. This result is obtained by measuring the…
Despite their diversity, many of the most prominent candidate theories of quantum gravity share the property to be effectively lower-dimensional at small scales. In particular, dimension two plays a fundamental role in the finiteness of…
We measure the spectral dimension of universes emerging from nonperturbative quantum gravity, defined through state sums of causal triangulated geometries. While four-dimensional on large scales, the quantum universe appears two-dimensional…
We study the $N$-dependent behaviour of $\mathrm{2d}$ causal set quantum gravity. This theory is known to exhibit a phase transition as the analytic continuation parameter $\beta$, akin to an inverse temperature, is varied. Using a scaling…
In D-dimensional spacetimes which can be foliated by n-dimensional homogeneous subspaces, a quantum field can be decomposed in terms of modes on the subspaces, reducing the system to a collection of (D-n)-dimensional fields. This allows one…
In various theories of quantum gravity, one observes a change in the spectral dimension from the topological spatial dimension $d$ at large length scales to some smaller value at small, Planckian scales. While the origin of such a flow is…
The spectral dimension measures the dimensionality of a space as witnessed by a diffusing random walker. Within the causal dynamical triangulations approach to the quantization of gravity, the spectral dimension exhibits novel…