We study the scalar-tensor theory of gravity profoundly in the action level as well as in the thermodynamic level. Contrary to the usual description in the literature about the equivalence in the two conformally connected frames, this paper addresses several incomplete inferences regarding it and mentions some inequivalences which were not pointed out earlier. In the thermodynamic level, our analysis shows the two frames are equivalent. In that process, we identify the entropy, the energy and the temperature for the thermodynamic description, and we find these quantities are conformally invariant even without any prior assumption. The same conclusion is reached from the gravitational action as well as from the Gibbons-Hawking-York boundary term, establishing the result in a more convincing manner.

It is well known that interpreting the cosmological constant as the pressure, the AdS black holes behave as the van der Waals thermodynamic system. In this case, like a phase transition from vapor to liquid in a usual van der Waals system, black holes also changes phases about a critical point in the P -V picture, where P is the pressure and V is the thermodynamic volume. Here, we give a geometrical description of this phase transition. Defining the relevant Legendre invariant thermogeometrics corresponding to the two criticality conditions, which determine the critical values of respective thermodynamical entities, we show that the critical point refers to the divergence of the Ricci scalars calculated from these metrics. The similar descriptions are also provided for the other two pictures of the van der Waals like phase transition: one is T -S and the other one is Y -X where T , S, X and Y are temperature, entropy, generalized force and generalized displacement; i.e. potential corresponding to external charge, respectively. The whole discussion is very general as no specific black hole metric is being used.

AdS black holes exhibit van der Waals type phase transition. In the extended phase-space formalism, the critical exponents for any spacetime metric are identical to the standard ones. Motivated by this fact, we give a general expression for the Helmholtz free energy near the critical point which correctly reproduces these exponents. The idea is similar to the Landau model which gives a phenomenological description of the usual second order phase transition. Here two main inputs are taken into account for the analysis: (a) black holes should have van der Waals like isotherms and (b) free energy can be expressed solely as a function of thermodynamic volume and horizon temperature. Resulting analysis shows that the form of Helmholtz free energy correctly encapsulates the features of Landau function. We also discuss the isolated critical point accompanied by nonstandard values of critical exponents. The whole formalism is then extended to other two criticalities, namely Y − X and T − S (based on the standard; i.e. non-extended phase-space), where X and Y are generalized force and displacement, whereas T and S are horizon temperature and entropy. We observe that in the former case Gibbs free energy plays the role of Landau function, whereas in the later case that role is played by the internal energy (here it is black hole mass). Our analysis shows that, although the existence of van der Waals phase transition depends on the explicit form of the black hole metric, the values of the critical exponents are universal in nature.

An uniformly accelerated (Rindler) observer will detect particles in the Minkowski vacuum, known as Unruh effect. The spectrum is thermal and the temperature is given by that of the Killing horizon, which is proportional to the acceleration. Considering these particles are kept in a thermal bath with this temperature, we find that the correlation function of the random force due to radiation acting on the particles as measured by the accelerated frame, shows the fluctuation-dissipation relation. It is observed that the correlations, in both (1 + 1) spacetime and (1 + 3) dimensional spacetimes, are of Brownian type. We discuss the implications of this new observation at the end.

We revisit the thermodynamic aspects of the scalar-tensor theory of gravity in the Jordan and in the Einstein frame. Examining the missing links of this theory carefully, we establish the thermodynamic descriptions from the conserved currents and potentials by following both the Noether and the Abbott-Deser-Tekin (ADT) formalism. With the help of conserved Noether current and potential, we define the thermodynamic quantities, which we show to be conformally invariant. Moreover, the defined quantities are shown to fit nicely in the laws of (the first and the second) black hole thermodynamics formulated by the Wald's method. We stretch the study of the conformal equivalence of the physical quantities in these two frames by following the ADT formalism. Our further study reveals that there is a connection between the ADT and the Noether conserved quantities, which signifies that the ADT approach provide the equivalent thermodynamic description in the two frames as obtained in Noether prescription. Our whole analysis is very general as the conserved Noether and ADT currents and potentials are formulated off-shell and the analysis is exempted from any prior assumption or boundary condition.PACS numbers: