Gravitational instability of static spherically symmetric Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet black holes in five and six dimensions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the gravitational stability of five- and six-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet black holes, revealing that below a critical mass, these black holes become unstable due to Gauss-Bonnet corrections, impacting high-energy black hole production.

Contribution

It extends previous linear stability analysis to unstable cases, calculating critical masses for instability in five and six dimensions.

Findings

Black holes below critical mass are unstable under gravitational perturbations.

Critical masses depend on the Gauss-Bonnet coupling and dimensionality.

Results have implications for black hole formation in high-energy collisions.

Abstract

Five and six dimensional static, spherically symmetric, asymptotically Euclidean black holes, are unstable under gravitational perturbations if their mass is lower than a critical value set by the string tension. The instability is due to the Gauss-Bonnet correction to Einstein's equations, and was found in a previous work on linear stability of Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet black holes with constant curvature horizons in arbitrary dimensions. We study the unstable cases and calculate the values of the critical masses. The results are relevant to the issue of black hole production in high energy collisions.