Holography, thermodynamics, and fluctuations of charged AdS black holes - art. no. 104026

The physical properties of Reissner-Nordstrom black holes in (n + 1)-dimens ional anti-de Sitter spacetime are related, by a holographic map, to the ph ysics of a class of n-dimensional field theories coupled to a background gl obal current. Motivated by that fact, and the recent observations of the st riking similarity between the thermodynamic phase structure of these black holes tin the canonical ensemble) and that of the van der Waals-Maxwell liq uid-gas system, we explore the physics in more detail. We study fluctuation s and stability within the equilibrium thermodynamics, examining the specif ic heats and electrical permittivity of the holes, and consider the analogu e of the Clayperon equation at the phase boundaries. Consequently, we refin e the phase diagrams in the canonical and grand canonical ensembles. We stu dy the interesting physics in the neighborhood of the critical point in the canonical ensemble. There is a second order phase transition found there, and that region is characterized by a Landau-Ginzburg model with A(3) poten tial. The holographically dual field theories provide the description of th e microscopic degrees of freedom which underlie all of the thermodynamics, as can be seen by examining the form of the microscopic fluctuations. [S055 6-2821(99)06820-4].