Multicritical phase transitions in Lovelock AdS black holes

Abstract

We demonstrate that black holes in order $N\ensuremath{\ge}4$ Lovelock gravity can exhibit multicritical phase behavior. We show an explicit example of a quadruple point in $d=10$ fourth-order Lovelock gravity and a quintuple point in $d=14$ sixth-order Lovelock gravity. We also demonstrate that multicriticality can be realized for uncharged, nonrotating black holes by highlighting a new type of multicritical point between black holes and thermal radiation. We discuss the methodology used and make comparisons to other black hole multicritical points in terms of the Gibbs phase rule.