We clarify the relation between noncommutative spacetimes and multifractional geometries, two quantum-gravity-related approaches where the fundamental description of spacetime is not given by a classical smooth geometry. Despite their different conceptual premises and mathematical formalisms, both research programs allow for the spacetime dimension to vary with the probed scale. This feature and other similarities led to ask whether there is a duality between these two independent proposals. In the absence of curvature and comparing the symmetries of both position and momentum space, we show that $\kappa$-Minkowski spacetime and the commutative multifractional theory with $q$-derivatives are physically inequivalent but they admit several contact points that allow one to describe certain aspects of $\kappa$-Minkowski noncommutative geometry as a multifractional theory and vice versa. Contrary to previous literature, this result holds without assuming any specific measure for $\kappa$-Minkowski. More generally, no well-defined $\star$-product can be constructed from the $q$-theory, although the latter does admit a natural noncommutative extension with a given deformed Poincaré algebra. A similar no-go theorem may be valid for all multiscale theories with factorizable measures. Turning gravity on, we write the algebras of gravitational first-class constraints in the multifractional theories with $q$- and weighted derivatives and discuss their differences with respect to the deformed algebras of $\kappa$-Minkowski spacetime and of loop quantum gravity.

• Received 26 September 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.045001