Phase transition and heat engine efficiency of phantom AdS black holes

Phase transition and heat engine efficiency of phantom AdS black holes are investigated with peculiar properties found. In the non-extended phase space, we probe the possibility of $T-S$ criticality in both the canonical ensemble and grand-canonical ensemble. It is shown that no $T-S$ criticality exists for the phantom AdS black hole in the canonical ensemble, which is different from the RN-AdS black hole. Contrary to the canonical ensemble, no critical point can be found for neither phantom AdS black holes nor RN-AdS black hole in the grand-canonical ensemble. Moreover, we study the specific heat at constant electric potential. When the electric potential satisfies $A_0>1$, only phantom AdS black holes undergo phase transition in the grand-canonical ensemble. In the extended phase space, we show that there is no $P-V$ criticality for phantom AdS black holes, contrary to the case of the RN-AdS black hole. Furthermore, we define a new kind of heat engine via phantom AdS black holes. Comparing to RN-AdS black holes, phantom AdS black holes have a lower heat engine efficiency. However, the ratio $\eta/\eta_C$ of phantom AdS black hole is higher, thus increasing the possibility of approaching the Carnot limit. This observation is obviously of interest. The interesting results obtained in this paper may be attributed to the existence of phantom field whose energy density is negative.