English

Second Law Violations in Lovelock Gravity for Black Hole Mergers

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2015-10-06 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We study the classical second law of black hole thermodynamics, for Lovelock theories (other than General Relativity), in arbitrary dimensions. Using the standard formula for black hole entropy, we construct scenarios involving the merger of two black holes in which the entropy instantaneously decreases. Our construction involves a Kaluza-Klein compactification down to a dimension in which one of the Lovelock terms is topological. We discuss some open issues in the definition of the second law which might be used to compensate this entropy decrease.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1011.4988,
  title  = {Second Law Violations in Lovelock Gravity for Black Hole Mergers},
  author = {Sudipta Sarkar and Aron C. Wall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1011.4988},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

15 pages, 1 figure, v2 Title change & minor revisions to match published version, v3 fixed accidental deletion of author names