Spacetime Dimensionality from de Sitter Entropy

Abstract

We argue that de Sitter universes with a small cosmological constant are entropically favored to have three spatial dimensions. The conclusion relies on the causal-patch description of de Sitter space, where fiducial observers experience local thermal equilibrium up to a stretched horizon, on the holographic principle, and on some assumptions about the nature of gravity and the constituents of Hawking/Unruh radiation.