On black strings & branes in Lovelock gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates the construction of black strings and branes in Lovelock gravity, identifying conditions under which these solutions can be extended from known Einstein solutions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that black strings and branes can be constructed in certain Lovelock theories with unique constant curvature vacua, extending known Einstein gravity results.

Findings

Black strings and branes are constructible in specific Lovelock theories.

Construction methods from Einstein gravity carry over to these Lovelock theories.

The results clarify conditions for extending Einstein solutions in higher-curvature gravity.

Abstract

It is well known that black strings and branes may be constructed in pure Einstein gravity simply by adding flat directions to a vacuum black hole solution. A similar construction holds in the presence of a cosmological constant. While these constructions fail in general Lovelock theories, we show that they carry over straightforwardly within a class of Lovelock gravity theories that have (locally) unique constant curvature vacua.