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Extremality as a Consistency Condition on Subregion Duality

High Energy Physics - Theory 2025-06-17 v4

Abstract

In JT gravity coupled to a CFT, I argue without using the path integral that the entanglement wedge of a boundary region is bounded by a quantum extremal surface (QES). For any candidate not bounded by a QES, a unitary in the complement can make reconstruction within the candidate inconsistent with boundary causality. The case without islands is a direct consequence of subregion duality, and the case with islands can also be dealt with with a stronger assumption.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2403.19562,
  title  = {Extremality as a Consistency Condition on Subregion Duality},
  author = {Ronak M Soni},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.19562},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

22 pages, 5 figures. v2: re-organised the paper and streamlined notaiton. v3: Added a high-level summary of the argument

R2 v1 2026-06-28T15:37:21.189Z