Riemannian and Lorentzian flow-cut theorems

Abstract

We prove several geometric theorems using tools from the theory of convex optimization. In the Riemannian setting, we prove the max flow-min cut theorem for boundary regions, applied recently to develop a "bit-thread" interpretation of holographic entanglement entropies. We also prove various properties of the max flow and min cut, including respective nesting properties. In the Lorentzian setting, we prove the analogous min flow-max cut theorem, which states that the volume of a maximal slice equals the flux of a minimal flow, where a flow is defined as a divergenceless timelike vector field with norm at least 1. This theorem includes as a special case a continuum version of Dilworth's theorem from the theory of partially ordered sets. We include a brief review of the necessary tools from the theory of convex optimization, in particular Lagrangian duality and convex relaxation.