Effective Potential of the Conformal Factor: Gravitational Average Action and Dynamical Triangulations

Abstract

We discuss the effective potential of the conformal factor in the effective average action approach to Quantum Einstein Gravity. Without invoking any truncation or other approximations we show that if the theory has has a non-Gaussian ultraviolet fixed point and is asymptotically safe the potential has a characteristic behavior near the origin. We argue that this characteristic behavior has already been observed in numerical simulations within the Causal Dynamical Triangulation approach.