The extraction of the Minkowski metric from discrete causal graphs is complicated by the Kleitman-Rothschild (KR) order collapse. A generic causal set overwhelmingly favors non-manifold KR-orders. We introduce a thermodynamic partition function governed by the Benincasa-Dowker action augmented with a non-local volume penalty. This partition function explicitly suppresses KR-orders. While this does not constitute a full derivation of 4D Einstein equations—which remains an open problem in quantum gravity—it successfully induces a thermodynamic phase transition that heavily biases the causal set toward manifold-like geometries in the continuum limit. This thermodynamic bias is a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of the pseudo-Riemannian metric $SO(1, D-1)$ and macroscopic Lorentz invariance.
A simple graph Laplacian yields a Riemannian metric. Recovering the pseudo-Riemannian metric of relativity requires Causal Sets. However, Causal Sets generically collapse into non-manifold three-layer structures.
where $S_{BD}(C)$ is the discrete Benincasa-Dowker action, and $V(C)$ is a volume penalty counting the number of localized intervals. The parameter $\beta$ acts as an inverse topological temperature.
At low topological temperatures (high $\beta$), the volume penalty $\beta V(C)$ thermodynamically suppresses the highly entropic, non-manifold KR-orders.
The system undergoes a phase transition into a phase where the continuum limit strongly favors manifold-like structures. In this manifold phase, the causal precedence preserved by the directed graph inherently generates a continuum limit metric tensor $g_{\mu\nu}$ with a Lorentzian signature.
Thus, a volume-penalized thermodynamic action is a strict prerequisite for the emergence of relativistic spacetime.