Pseudo-topological transitions in 2D gravity models coupled to massless scalar fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates the geometrical phases of 2D causal dynamical triangulations coupled to massless scalar fields, revealing a critical 'barrier' at c=1 and a transition from quantum fluctuation-dominated to semiclassical spherical geometries.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of a c=1 barrier in 2D CDT coupled to scalar fields and characterizes the transition from quantum to semiclassical geometries with distinct topologies.

Findings

For d ≤ 1, geometries are quantum-fluctuation dominated with toroidal topology.

For d > 1, geometries become semiclassical, spherical, with Hausdorff dimension 3.

The effective dynamics in the semiclassical phase resemble mini-superspace actions similar to higher-dimensional CDT models.

Abstract

We study the geometries generated by two-dimensional causal dynamical triangulations (CDT) coupled to $d$ massless scalar fields. Using methods similar to those used to study four-dimensional CDT we show that there exists a $c=1$ "barrier", analogous to the $c=1$ barrier encountered in non-critical string theory, only the CDT transition is easier to be detected numerically. For $d\leq 1$ we observe time-translation invariance and geometries entirely governed by quantum fluctuations around the uniform toroidal topology put in by hand. For $d>1$ the effective average geometry is no longer toroidal but "semiclassical" and spherical with Hausdorff dimension $d_H = 3$. In the $d>1$ sector we study the time dependence of the semiclassical spatial volume distribution and show that the observed behavior is described an effective mini-superspace action analogous to the actions found in the de Sitter phase of three- and four-dimensional pure CDT simulations and in the three-dimensional CDT-like Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz models.