English

The second law of black hole mechanics in effective field theory

High Energy Physics - Theory 2022-08-29 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We investigate the second law of black hole mechanics in gravitational theories with higher derivative terms in the action. Wall has described a method for defining an entropy that satisfies the second law to linear order in perturbations around a stationary black hole. We show that this can be extended to define an entropy that satisfies the second law to quadratic order in perturbations, provided that one treats the higher derivative terms in the sense of effective field theory. We also address some outstanding issues with Wall's method, in particular, its gauge invariance and its relation to the Iyer-Wald entropy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2205.15341,
  title  = {The second law of black hole mechanics in effective field theory},
  author = {Stefan Hollands and Áron D. Kovács and Harvey S. Reall},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.15341},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

57 pages + Appendix; v2: typos corrected, references added; v3: argument of section 4 simplified, typos corrected