Speaker
Saoussen MBAREK
(University of Waterloo)
Description
In this work, we will be introducing so called "thermalons"and studying them in 5 dimentional Gauss-Bonnet Gravity. Thermalons can mediate phase transitions between different vacua in higher curvature gravity, potentially changing the asymptotic structure of the spacetime. Treating the cosmological constant as a dynamical parameter, we study these phase transitions in the context of extended thermodynamic phase space. We find that in the AdS to dS case, thermal AdS can only undergo a phase transition if it is below the Nariai limit. The solutions found beyond Nariai are interpreted as "unphysical". We also find that thermal AdS space can undergo a phase transition to an asymptotically flat black hole geometry. In the context of AdS to AdS transitions, we comment on the similarities and differences between thermalon transitions and the Hawking-Page transition.
