JHEP07(2017)042
Contents
1 Introduction
1
2 Equations of motion and boundary conditions 2
3 Properties of phase transitions in a box 3
3.1 Scalar condensation with various q and m
2
3
3.2 Phase transitions with St¨uckelberg mechanism 6
4 Conclusions 7
1 Introduction
The schwarzschi l d black holes in flat space with negative specific heat cannot be in equi-
librium with the thermal environment since there is inevitable Hawking radiati on. For this
case, York and other authors provided a way to bypass this problem by putting the black
hole in a box to constru ct a quasi-local thermodynam i c ensemble [
1, 2]. In contrast, the
AdS black holes are usually thermodynamical l y stable since in a certain sense the AdS
boundary plays a role of the box condition [
3]. W i t h the interest of the AdS/CFT corre-
spondence [
4–6], the AdS gravity has attracted a lot of attentions, such as there are many
literatures about holographic superconductors constructed in the AdS spacetime [
7]–[31].
In the Einstein-Maxwell theory, it was shown that phase structures of the system
in a box is similar to those of the AdS gr avity [
32–34]. Then, it is very interesting to
include a scalar field to further compare the similarity between transitions in a box and
those of the holographi c superconductor system. Recently, P. Basu, C. Krishnan and
P.N.B. Subramanian init i at ed a thermodynamic study of such systems constructed by a
charged scalar field coupled t o electromagnetic field in asy mpt ot i c flat space with box
boundary conditions [
35]. Besides the flat space and normal RN black hole, it also admits
hairy solutions of boson star an d hairy RN black hole in this model. These two types
of hairy solutions are thermodynamically stable for certain region of parameters. Firstly,
it provides a way to evade the flat space no-hai r theorems. The more interesting result
is that the overall phase structure of the system in a box is strikingly similar to that
of holographic sup e r con duc tor s in AdS gravity background. For example, there is flat
space/black hole transitions corresponding to the classical Hawking-Page transition in AdS
gravity [
3]. And this model also admits black hole/hairy black hole transitions similar
to those in holographi c theori es . In addition, there are flat space/boson star transiti ons
corresponding to holographic i ns ul at or/s uperconductor and global AdS/boson star systems
in AdS gravity [
36, 37]. As a further step along this line, it will be very interesting to
study phase transitions in a box with condensation diagrams from asymptotic behaviors
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