Constraining higher order gravities with subregion duality

Abstract: In higher derivative theories, gravity can travel slower or faster than light. With this feature in mind, we revisit the construction of the causal and entanglement wedges in this type of theories, and argue that they must be constructed using the fastest mode instead of null rays. We show that the property of causal wedge inclusion, i.e., the fact that the causal wedge must be contained in the entanglement wedge, leads to more stringent constraints on the couplings than those imposed by hyperbolicity and boundary causality. Our results imply that the full power of subregion-subregion duality could lead to the same conclusions previously obtained based on high energy graviton scattering. We illustrate our findings with a systematic analysis in Gauss-Bonnet gravity.