Thermodynamics and Universality in Anisotropic Higher Curvature Spacetimes
Abstract
In my thesis, I describe new results in the thermodynamics of black holes in two gravitational scenarios: spacetime anisotropy and higher curvature gravity. I focus on classifying the critical point of "Large Black Hole / Small Black Hole" phase transitions in higher curvature gravity in various dimensions, for both numerical and analytic black hole solutions. Special emphasis will be placed on five-dimensional cubic and quartic quasitopological gravity. I cover the motivation and document a number of higher curvature black hole solutions as well as the thermodynamic behaviour of these black holes when they are asymptotically Lifshitz symmetric (a form of anisotropy). I describe the methodology used to construct the set of thermodynamic potentials for black holes with general asymptotics from a collection of well-justified conjectures, followed by the development of procedures to numerically and analytically determine unknown quantities such as mass and thermodynamic volume from these conjectures. I will complete this thesis by extracting the critical exponents and thereby finding the universality class of the critical behaviour for a number of black hole solutions. This work has implications for the study of the gauge/gravity duality as well as for the dynamical behaviour of black holes.
Collections
Cite this version of the work
Wilson Brenna
(2016).
Thermodynamics and Universality in Anisotropic Higher Curvature Spacetimes. UWSpace.
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/10554
Other formats