Combinatorial Quantum Gravity: Emergence of Geometric Space from Random Graphs

Abstract

We review and extend the recently proposed model of combinatorial quantum gravity. Contrary to previous discrete approaches, this model is defined on (regular) random graphs and is driven by a purely combinatorial version of Ricci curvature, the Ollivier curvature, defined on generic metric spaces equipped with a Markov chain. It dispenses thus of notions such as simplicial complexes and Regge calculus and is ideally suited to extend quantum gravity to combinatorial structures which have a priori nothing to do with geometry. Indeed, our results show that geometry and general relativity emerge from random structures in a second-order phase transition due to the condensation of cycles on random graphs, a critical point that defines quantum gravity non-perturbatively according to asymptotic safety. In combinatorial quantum gravity the entropy area law emerges naturally as a consequence of infinite-dimensional critical behaviour on networks rather than on lattices. We propose thus that the entropy area law is a signature of the random graph nature of space-(time) on the smallest scales.