Entropy functionals and c -theorems from the second law

We show that for a general four derivative theory of gravity, only the holographic entanglement entropy functionals obey the second law at linearized order in perturbations. We also derive bounds on the higher curvature couplings in several examples, demanding the validity of the second law for higher order perturbations. For the five-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet theory in the context of AdS/CFT, the bound arising from black branes coincides with there being no sound channel instability close to the horizon. Repeating the analysis for topological black holes, the bound coincides with the tensor channel causality constraint (which is responsible for the viscosity bound). Furthermore, we show how to recover the holographic c-theorems in higher curvature theories from similar considerations based on the Raychaudhuri equation.