The Geodesics Less Traveled: Nonminimal RT Surfaces and Holographic Scattering

Abstract

The connected wedge theorem states that in order to have a scattering process in the bulk, it is necessary to have O(1/G_N) mutual information between certain “decision” regions in the boundary theory. While this large mutual information is not generally sufficient to imply scattering, previous literature showed that for a certain class of geometries, bulk scattering is implied by a certain relation between two (possibly non-minimal) Ryu–Takayanagi surfaces. In this work, we show that the 2-to-2 version of the theorem becomes an equivalence in pure AdS3: large mutual information between appropriate boundary subregions is both necessary and sufficient for bulk scattering. This result allows us to extend previous findings to a broader class of asymptotically AdS3 spacetimes, which we illustrate with the spinning conical defect geometry. In contrast, we find that matter sources can disrupt this converse relation, and that the n-to-n version of the theorem with n>2 lacks a converse even in the AdS3 vacuum.