Ultraviolet dimensional reduction of spacetime with zero-point length

Abstract

Abstract Among the many disparate approaches towards quantum gravity, the reduction of spacetime dimension in the ultraviolet regime is expected to be a common thread. The spectral dimension of spacetime is defined in the context of diffusion processes on a manifold. We show that a spacetime with zero-point length has spectral dimension 3.5 when the characteristic diffusion time has the size of the zero-point length. The spectral dimension (negatively) diverges for an even shorter diffusion time, thus preventing reliable physical interpretation in the deep ultraviolet regime. The thermodynamic dimension is defined by realizing that the free energy $$F(\beta )$$ F ( β ) of a free field or ideal gas at finite temperature ( $$\beta ^{-1}$$ β - 1 ) in D dimensions scales as $$F\sim \beta ^{-D}$$ F ∼ β - D . Using Schwinger’s proper time formalism, we show that for spacetime incorporating a zero-point length, the thermodynamic dimension reduces to 1.5 near the Planck scale and then to 1 in the deep ultraviolet regime. This signifies a “phase-transition” in which a (massless) bosonic ideal gas in four dimensions essentially behaves like radiation ( $$w=1/3$$ w = 1 / 3 ) at low energies, whereas near the Planck scale, it behaves equivalently to having an equation of state parameter $$w=2$$ w = 2 . Furthermore, dimension can be deduced from the potential $$V_D(r)$$ V D ( r ) of interaction between two point-like sources separated at a distance r as its scaling depends on D. Comparing with the scaling behavior of conventional Yukawa-like potentials at short distances, we show that the ultraviolet dimension appears to be either 2 or 3 depending on the use of massive or massless force carriers as probes.