REVIEW 3 major objections 4 minor 14 references
One gravity theory on the two-dimensional p-adic space and conjectures on $p$-adic AdS/CFT
T0 review · 3 major / 4 minor · reviewed 2026-08-12 · deepseek-v4-flash
Pith's one-line read This paper claims that a discrete gravitational theory on the p-adic plane Q_p^2, built from a subgraph-dependent distance and curvature R(a)=1-deg(a), reproduces the curvature signs of dS, Euclidean, and AdS spaces, and conjectures that…
desk verdict The distance-function core is a real contribution; the gravity-action construction is not yet well-defined because the measure (48) violates the additivity axiom it depends on. read the letter →
The pith
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
The reading
What carries the argument
The carrying object is the subgraph-dependent regularized distance $D(x,y)=p^{d(x,y)-d(x,\Omega)-d(y,\Omega)}$, together with the associated ball measure $\mu(a)=\sum_{e\sim a}l_e$. Vertices of the tree are interpreted as balls in $\mathbb{Q}_p^2$, and the boundary measure $dx$ is fixed by requiring $\int_c dx=\mu(c)$ for every ball $c$. The curvature $R_\Omega(a)=1-\deg(a)$, extended to boundary points by $R_\Omega(x)=R_\Omega(a)$ when $x$ lies in the ball of $a$, turns the action into $S=\sum_{a\in\Omega}R_\Omega(a)\mu(a)$. This is the machinery that lets the paper go from distances to an action without ever writing a line element.
What would settle it
Take $\Omega=T_p$ inside the tree $T'_p$, truncate the tree at depth $N$, compute $S_N=\sum_{a}(1-\deg(a))\sum_{e\sim a}l_e$ with all edge lengths equal, and let $N$ grow; if the partial sums diverge, or if the partition identity $\sum_{a\in\Omega}\int_a dx=\int dx$ fails because the balls overlap, the proposed action is undefined without an extra regularization.
Extended reading notes
Core claim
The central claim is that the pair $(\mathbb{Q}_p^2,\Omega)$ is a self-contained gravitational system: the boundary carries the space, the subgraph $\Omega$ carries the curvature, and the action $S=\sum_{a\in\Omega}(1-\deg(a))\sum_{e\sim a}l_e$ defines gravity on both at once. The derivation passes through the identity $S=\int dx\,R_\Omega(x)=\sum_{a\in\Omega}R_\Omega(a)\mu(a)$, with $\mu(a)=\sum_{e\sim a}l_e$ as the measure of the ball represented by vertex $a$. For $\Omega$ a single vertex the curvature is positive and the distance is the p-adic analogue of the dS chordal distance; for $\Omega$ a single boundary point the curvature is zero; for $\Omega=T_p$ the curvature is negative. The paper concludes that different choices of $\Omega$ turn the same boundary $\mathbb{Q}_p^2$ into different spaces, and that the action allows the edge lengths inside $\Omega$ to fluctuate while edge lengths outside remain unchanged.
Load-bearing premise
The load-bearing premise is that for every vertex $a$ of the chosen subgraph $\Omega$, the balls $b(a)$ form a disjoint partition of the boundary and that $\mu(a)=\sum_{e\sim a}l_e$ is additive; for $\Omega=T_p$ the balls are nested rather than disjoint, so the action sum is not obviously finite.
Editorial extensions
If this is right
- If the construction is correct, gravity on the p-adic plane can be written as a discrete sum over vertices of a subgraph, giving a concrete bulk-like model for p-adic AdS/CFT.
- The curvature sign $1-\deg(a)$ automatically matches the real-space expectations: positive for dS, zero for Euclidean, negative for AdS.
- The action makes edge lengths inside $\Omega$ the dynamical variables, while edges outside $\Omega$ remain fixed and equal.
- Under the paper's identification of measures and distances, the three boundary effective actions in Eq. (50) coincide, which is the basis for the conjecture that p-adic AdS/CFT results are the same in arbitrary spaces.
Reading between the lines
- A stress test would be to regularize the action for $\Omega=T_p$ on a finite truncation of the tree and check convergence; the paper does not perform this check.
- If the uniqueness conjecture is right, all boundary correlation functions computed with different subgraphs should agree after identifying measures, not just the three examples displayed in Eq. (50).
- The same embedding construction could be applied to $\mathbb{Q}_p^n$ for $n>2$ by assigning curvatures from vertex degrees of a higher-dimensional tree-like complex.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. This paper proposes a subgraph-dependent regularization of the distance between boundary points of the Bruhat-Tits trees T_p and T'_p, leading to p-adic analogues of de Sitter, Euclidean, and anti-de Sitter chordal distances. It then defines a vertex curvature R_Omega(a) = 1 - deg(a), an action S = sum_{a in Omega} (1 - deg(a)) sum_{e ~ a} l_e, and claims that this is a gravitational theory on Q_p^2. The paper closes with two conjectures: that p-adic AdS/CFT computations can be performed in arbitrary spaces with essentially the same results, and that p-adic CFT is essentially unique.
Significance. The distance formulas in Section 3 and their comparison with real chordal distances are a useful and partially convincing observation; the sign pattern of R_Omega in Eq. (43) matches the expected dS/Euclidean/AdS curvatures, and Eq. (49) is an explicit, concrete proposal that could in principle be tested. However, the central construction is not yet a well-defined gravity theory: the measure underlying the action is not additive, the boundary decomposition used in Eq. (47) fails for the tree subgraph Omega = T_p, and the conjectures rest on an equality quoted from the author's own prior work without independent verification in this paper.
major comments (3)
- [Sec. 4, Eqs. (47)-(49)] The derivation of the action is invalid as it stands. The first equality in Eq. (47) requires that the balls b(a) for a in Omega form a disjoint cover of the boundary and that mu be additive, but the proposed measure mu(a) = sum_{e ~ a} l_e in Eq. (48) violates the additivity axiom stated in Sec. 4. For example, in a finite subtree r-a-{b1,b2} with unit edge lengths, additivity for the children of a requires mu(a) = mu(b1) + mu(b2) = 2, whereas Eq. (48) gives mu(a) = 3 because it also counts the edge to the parent. For the pAdS2 case Omega = T_p, the balls b(a) are nested rather than disjoint, so boundary points whose geodesic stays in T_p lie in infinitely many balls and boundary points outside T_p lie in none; with l_e = 1 the sum in Eq. (49) evaluates to -p(p+1)|V(T_p)|, which diverges. The boundary integral in Eq. (47) and the vertex sum in Eq. (49) are therefore different objects, and the proposed gravitational action is not well-defined without an additive measure or a regularization.
- [Sec. 4, Eq. (42)] The curvature R_Omega(a) = 1 - deg(a) is introduced to match the sign pattern of dS/Euclidean/AdS spaces, but it is not derived from the distance or embedding structure, and no variational principle or equations of motion are given for the action in Eq. (49). In particular, the absence of a line element means that the claim that R_Omega is a scalar curvature cannot be checked under the allowed transformations. The paper would need at least a justification that Eq. (42) is a natural curvature for the discrete structure, and some statement of how the edge lengths l_e are varied, before Eq. (49) can be called a gravity theory.
- [Sec. 5, Eq. (51)] The two conjectures at the end of the paper rest on the equality d(1)x d(1)y / |x-y|_1^2 = d(2)x d(2)y / |x-y|_2^2 = d(3)x d(3)y / |x-y|_3^2 = dx dy / |x-y|_p^2, quoted from the author's previous paper [14]. This equality is not derived or independently checked here, and the notation d(i) is not fully specified. Since the conjectures are the main conceptual conclusion of the paper, the equality should at least be verified for representative cases in this manuscript, and the meaning of 'essentially unique' should be made precise.
minor comments (4)
- [Sec. 3.2, Eq. (19)] The piecewise distance formulas for the finite subgraph Omega = {c_k} are stated after 'following analogous procedures' for most of the nine types; a derivation or at least an exhaustive case table should be provided so that the formulas can be checked.
- [Sec. 3.6 and Table 2] There are typos: 'choral distance' should be 'chordal distance', and 'Bruhat-Tits' should be capitalized consistently. The table also uses D for both the regularized and unregularized distances; please clarify which quantity is tabulated.
- [Sec. 4, Eq. (45)] The definition R_Omega(x) = R_Omega(a) for x in a in Omega is ambiguous because a boundary point can belong to several nested balls when Omega contains ancestor and descendant vertices; the domain of the map a -> b(a) needs to be made precise.
- [Sec. 5, Eq. (50)] The notation d(i), i = 1,2,3 is used without defining the normalization or the precise domain of integration; this makes the quoted equality (51) hard to verify independently.
Circularity Check
Curvature sign agreement is built into the definition of R_Omega and the naming in Table 1, while the two conjectures lean on the author's own [14]; the action itself is an explicit ansatz rather than a forced result.
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self definitional
[Section 4, Eqs. (42)-(43), following Table 1]
"Considering that the curvatures of dS space, Euclidean space and AdS space should be positive, zero, and negative respectively, we introduce a curvature on vertices of Ω as RΩ := 1 − deg(a), a ∈ Ω. ... pdS2 : RΩ(a) = 1 − 0 = 1 > 0, a ∈ Ω = {c(0, 1, ∞)}; pAdS2 : RΩ(a) = 1 − (1 + p) = −p < 0, a ∈ Ω = T p."
The sign pattern is not discovered but imposed. The names pdS2 and pAdS2 were assigned in Table 1 because the distance formulas resemble the real dS and AdS chordal distances; RΩ is then defined as 1 − deg(a), which by the degree counts of those Ω's automatically gives positive and negative values. The 'result' that p-adic dS curvature is positive and p-adic AdS curvature is negative is therefore a restatement of the definition together with the earlier naming, not an independent check. Since this sign agreement is the paper's stated justification of the theory's reasonableness, the justification is circular.
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other
[Section 4, Eqs. (47)-(49)]
"S = ∫ dx RΩ(x) = Σ_{a∈Ω} ∫_a dx RΩ(a) = Σ_{a∈Ω} RΩ(a) μ(a). ... We now consider the case of μ(a) := Σ_{e∼a} le, where le is the length of e. Now the action can be written as S = Σ_{a∈Ω} RΩ(a) Σ_{e∼a} le = Σ_{a∈Ω} (1 − deg(a)) Σ_{e∼a} le."
The purported reformulation of the boundary action as the vertex sum (49) depends on the balls of Ω partitioning the boundary and on μ being additive, which the paper itself lists as condition (3) for a measure. The newly introduced μ(a) = Σ_{e∼a} l_e is not additive at a branching vertex, so Eq. (47) does not actually hold for this μ. For Ω = T_p, the balls are nested rather than disjoint, and with l_e = 1 the sum diverges. Consequently Eq. (49) is a separately postulated lattice action, not a consequence of the measure construction. It is a definitional ansatz, and any later appeal to (49) as a predicted gravitational action would reduce to that choice rather than to independent input.
1 more flagged steps
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self citation load bearing
[Section 5, Eq. (51) and the two conjectures]
"It is further pointed out in [14] that d(1)x d(1)y / |x−y|^2_1 = d(2)x d(2)y / |x−y|^2_2 = d(3)x d(3)y / |x−y|^2_3 = dxdy / |x−y|^2_p ... And it lead us to make the following conjectures: (1) the computation of p-adic AdS/CFT can be performed in arbitrary spaces, and the final results are essentially the same; (2) the p-adic CFT is essentially unique."
The evidence connecting three effective actions to a single p-adic expression is quoted from the author's own earlier paper [14], and the conjectures—especially 'p-adic CFT is essentially unique'—are advanced on the strength of that self-cited equality. No independent derivation, numerical test, or external theorem is offered here; the load-bearing support for the conjectures is a self-citation. The conjectures are admittedly speculative, which softens the charge, but it is still a case of the paper's advertised conclusions resting on the author's prior work rather than on independent content.
full rationale
The paper is not wholly circular: the pAdS2 chordal distance is taken from the independent reference [4], and the comparison with real-number chordal distances in Table 2 is an external analogy. However, the central validation step for the curvature is circular by construction: R_Omega is chosen as 1 − deg(a) so that the pre-named pdS2, pE2, and pAdS2 cases have positive, zero, and negative sign, respectively. The action (49), while not fitted to data, is also not derived from the stated measure axioms because μ(a)=Σ l_e is non-additive; it is an explicit ansatz, so any claim that it is 'justified' by the curvature comparison reduces to the definition. Finally, the two conjectures are motivated by an equality from the author's own [14], making the speculative conclusions self-citation-dependent. These issues are real but limited: they concern how the theory is justified and named, not a prediction that is secretly a fit. Score 5 reflects partial circularity in the validation and conjecture chain, while leaving room for the genuinely imported external results.
Assumptions & free parameters
free parameters (3)
- subgraph Omega =
various: single vertex, boundary point, whole tree
- edge length L =
not fixed
- curvature offset (the 1 in R=1-deg(a)) =
1
assumptions (5)
- domain assumption The boundary of the tree T'_p is Q_p^2
- domain assumption The regularized distance D(x,y)=p^{d(x,y)-d(x,Omega)-d(y,Omega)} is the correct p-adic analogue of chordal distance
- ad hoc to paper The combinatorial curvature R_Omega(a)=1-deg(a) is a valid scalar curvature for the boundary
- domain assumption The boundary integral can be rewritten as the sum over a in Omega of R_Omega(a) mu(a)
- standard math The equality d^(1)x d^(1)y/|x-y|_1^2 = d^(2)x d^(2)y/|x-y|_2^2 = d^(3)x d^(3)y/|x-y|_3^2
invented entities (3)
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Tree T'_p with boundary Q_p^2
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Curvature formula R_Omega(a)=1-deg(a)
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Gravity action S=sum over a of (1-deg(a)) times sum over e~a of l_e
Cite this review
Pith. "Pith review of One gravity theory on the two-dimensional p-adic space and conjectures on $p$-adic AdS/CFT." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/4Y7QTINQ
@misc{pith2026260807919,
author = {Pith},
title = {Pith review of: One gravity theory on the two-dimensional p-adic space and conjectures on $p$-adic AdS/CFT},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/4Y7QTINQ}},
note = {Machine review of arXiv:2608.07919}
}
abstract
By means of a higher-dimensional embedding approach, together with the study of distance, measure, and curvature, we construct a gravitational theory on the two-dimensional space over $p$-adic numbers. Before obtaining the final gravitational theory, we supplement some calculations based on existing literature and justify the reasonableness of the gravitational theory by comparison with the real-number case-for instance, the curvatures of de Sitter(dS), anti-de Sitter(AdS), and Euclidean spaces should be positive, negative, and zero, respectively. Finally, we put forward two conjectures: (1) $p$-adic AdS/CFT can be computed in arbitrary spaces, not only in $p$-adic AdS space($p$AdS), and the results are essentially the same; (2) $p$-adic CFT is essentially unique.
Figures
Figures from the paper (5 more)
Reference graph
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Reviewed August 12, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.
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