Thermodynamics of the hot BIon

We investigate the thermodynamics of the recently obtained finite temperature BIon solution of arXiv:1012.1494, focusing on two aspects. The first concerns comparison of the free energy of the three available phases for the finite temperature brane-antibrane wormhole configuration. Based on this we propose a heuristic picture for the dynamics of the phases that involves a critical temperature below which a stable phase exists. This stable phase is the finite temperature analogue of the thin throat branch of the extremal brane anti-brane wormhole configuration. The second aspect that we consider is the possibility of constructing a finite temperature generalization of the infinite spike configuration of the extremal BIon. To this end we identify a correspondence point at the end of the throat where the thermodynamics of the D3-F1 blackfold configuration can be matched to that of k non-extremal black fundamental strings.