(Un)attractor black holes in higher derivative AdS gravity

Abstract

We investigate five-dimensional static (non-)extremal black hole solutions in higher derivative Anti-de Sitter gravity theories with neutral scalars non-minimally coupled to gauge fields. We explicitly identify the boundary counterterms to regularize the gravitational action and the stress tensor. We illustrate these results by applying the method of holographic renormalization to computing thermodynamical properties in several concrete examples. We also construct numerical extremal black hole solutions and discuss the attractor mechanism by using the entropy function formalism. © SISSA 2008.