The Einstein-Hilbert Action for Entropically Dominant Causal Sets

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Carlip, Peter, Carlip, Steve, Surya, Sumati
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Carlip, Peter
Carlip, Steve
Surya, Sumati
author_facet Carlip, Peter
Carlip, Steve
Surya, Sumati
contents In the path integral formulation of causal set quantum gravity, the quantum partition function is a phase-weighted sum over locally finite partially ordered sets, which are viewed as discrete quantum spacetimes. It is known, however, that the number of ``layered'' sets -- a class of causal sets that look nothing like spacetime manifolds -- grows superexponentially with the cardinality $n$, giving an entropic contribution that can potentially dominate that of the action. We show here that in any dimension, the discrete Einstein-Hilbert action for a typical $K$-layered causal set reduces to the simple link action to leading order in $n$. Combined with earlier work, this completes the proof that the layered sets, although entropically dominant, are very strongly suppressed in the path sum of causal set quantum gravity whenever the discreteness scale is greater than or equal to a (mildly dimension-dependent) order one multiple of the Planck scale.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_18238
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Einstein-Hilbert Action for Entropically Dominant Causal Sets
Carlip, Peter
Carlip, Steve
Surya, Sumati
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
In the path integral formulation of causal set quantum gravity, the quantum partition function is a phase-weighted sum over locally finite partially ordered sets, which are viewed as discrete quantum spacetimes. It is known, however, that the number of ``layered'' sets -- a class of causal sets that look nothing like spacetime manifolds -- grows superexponentially with the cardinality $n$, giving an entropic contribution that can potentially dominate that of the action. We show here that in any dimension, the discrete Einstein-Hilbert action for a typical $K$-layered causal set reduces to the simple link action to leading order in $n$. Combined with earlier work, this completes the proof that the layered sets, although entropically dominant, are very strongly suppressed in the path sum of causal set quantum gravity whenever the discreteness scale is greater than or equal to a (mildly dimension-dependent) order one multiple of the Planck scale.
title The Einstein-Hilbert Action for Entropically Dominant Causal Sets
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.18238