Reentrant phase transitions in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar black holes

TL;DR

This paper explores how scalar fields influence the thermodynamics of charged AdS black holes, revealing reentrant phase transitions in a novel (3+1)-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-scalar model.

Contribution

It presents the first example of reentrant phase transitions in (3+1) dimensions within a consistent Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory.

Findings

Reentrant phase behavior occurs for an intermediate charge range.

The reverse isoperimetric inequality is satisfied.

Stable hairy black hole solutions exist at zero temperature.

Abstract

We consider how scalar fields affect the thermodynamic behavior of charged anti-de Sitter (AdS) black holes. We specifically investigate a class of (3+1)-dimensional exact hairy charged AdS black hole solutions to Einstein-Maxwell-scalar gravity, whose stable ground state and finite horizon area in the zero temperature limit make it of particular interest. We find that the reverse isoperimetric inequality is satisfied for this class and that there exists an intermediate range of the charge that admits reentrant phase behavior, the first example of this type of phase behavior in (3+1) dimensions in a consistent theory.