Appearence of Mother Universe and Singular Vertices in Random Geometries

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We discuss a general mechanism that drives the phase transition in the canonical ensemble in models of random geometries. As an example we consider a solvable model of branched polymers where the transition leading from tree- to bush-like polymers relies on the occurrence of vertices with a large number of branches. The source of this transition is a combination of the constraint on the total number of branches in the canonical ensemble and a nonlinear one-vertex action. We argue that exactly the same mechanism, which we call constrained mean-field, plays the crucial role in the phase transition in 4d simplicial gravity and, when applied to the effective one-vertex action, explains the occurrence of both the mother universe and singular vertices at the transition point when the system enters the crumpled phase.