Instability of charged black holes in anti-de Sitter space

TL;DR

This paper identifies a tachyonic instability in large charged anti-de Sitter black holes, linking it to thermodynamic instability, through linearized perturbation analysis in four dimensions.

Contribution

It demonstrates a direct connection between dynamical tachyonic modes and thermodynamic instability in large AdS Reissner-Nordstrom black holes.

Findings

Tachyonic mode appears at the onset of thermodynamic instability.

Instability correlates with the black hole's size and charge.

Numerical analysis confirms the instability threshold with minimal discrepancy.

Abstract

We exhibit a tachyonic mode in a linearized analysis of perturbations of large anti-de Sitter Reissner-Nordstrom black holes in four dimensions. In the large black hole limit, and up to a 0.7% discrepancy which is probably round-off error in the numerical analysis, the tachyon appears precisely when the black hole becomes thermodynamically unstable.