Horndeski gravities are theories of gravity coupled to a scalar field, in which the action contains an additional non-minimal quadratic coupling of the scalar, through its first derivative, to the Einstein tensor or the analogous higher-derivative tensors coming from the variation of Gauss-Bonnet or Lovelock terms. In this paper we study the thermodynamics of the static black hole solutions in n dimensions, in the simplest case of a Horndeski coupling to the Einstein tensor. We apply the Wald formalism to calculate the entropy of the black holes, and show that there is an additional contribution over and above those that come from the standard Wald entropy formula. The extra contribution can be attributed to unusual features in the behaviour of the scalar field. We also show that a conventional regularisation to calculate the Euclidean action leads to an expression for the entropy that disagrees with the Wald results. This seems likely to be due to ambiguities in the subtraction procedure. We also calculate the viscosity in the dual CFT, and show that the viscosity/entropy ratio can violate the η/S ≥ 1/(4π) bound for appropriate choices of the parameters.

We obtain a class of asymptotic flat or (A)dS hairy black holes in D-dimensional Einstein gravity coupled to a scalar with certain scalar potential. For a given mass, the theory admits both the Schwarzschild-Tangherlini and the hairy black holes with different temperature and entropy, but satisfying the same first law of thermodynamics. For some appropriate choice of parameters, the scalar potential can be expressed in terms of a super-potential and it can arise in gauged supergravities. In this case, the solutions develop a naked curvature singularity and become the spherical domain walls. Uplifting the solutions to D = 11 or 10, we obtain solutions that can be viewed as spherical M-branes or D3-branes. We also add electric charges to these hairy black holes. All these solutions contain no scalar charges in that the first law of thermodynamics are unmodified. We also try to construct new AdS black holes carrying scalar charges, with some moderate success in that the charges are pre-fixed in the theory instead of being some continuous integration constants.

We study the butterfly effect of the AdS planar black holes in the framework of Einstein's general relativity. We find that the butterfly velocities can be expressed by a universal formula v 2 B = T S/(2V th P ). In doing so, we come upon a near-horizon geometrical formula for the thermodynamical volume V th . We verify the volume formula by examining a variety of AdS black holes. We also show that the volume formula implies that the conjectured reverse isoperimetric inequality follows straightforwardly from the null-energy condition, for static AdS black holes. The inequality is thus related to an upper bound of the butterfly velocities. *

We show that there exists a critical point for the coupling constants in Einsteinian cubic gravity where the linearized equations on the maximally-symmetric vacuum vanish identically. We construct an exact isotropic bounce universe in the critical theory in four dimensions. The comoving time runs from minus infinity to plus infinity, yielding a smooth universe bouncing between two de Sitter vacua. In five dimensions we adopt numerical approach to construct a bounce solution, where a singularity occurred before the bounce takes place. We then construct exact anisotropic bounces that connect two isotropic de Sitter spacetimes with flat spatial sections. We further construct exact AdS black holes in the critical theory in four and five dimensions and obtain an exact AdS wormbrane in four dimensions. *

The recently proposed complexity-action conjecture allows one to calculate how fast one can produce a quantum state from a reference state in terms of the on-shell action of the dual AdS black hole at the Wheeler-DeWitt patch. We show that the action growth rate is given by the difference of the generalized enthalpy between the two corresponding horizons.The proof relies on the second identity that the surface-term contribution on a horizon is given by the product of the associated temperature and entropy.

We extend an earlier investigation of the thermodynamics of static black holes in an Einstein-Horndeski theory of gravity coupled to a scalar field, by including now an electromagnetic field as well. By studying the two-parameter families of charged static black holes, we obtain much more powerful constraints on the thermodynamics since, unlike in the uncharged one-parameter case, now the right-hand side of the first law is not automatically integrable. In fact, this allows us to demonstrate that there must be an additional contribution in the first law, over and above the usual terms expected for charged black holes. The origin of the extra contribution can be attributed to the behaviour of the scalar field on the horizon of the black hole. We carry out the calculations in four dimensions and also in general dimensions. We also derive the ratio of viscosity to entropy for the dual boundary field theory, showing that the usual viscosity bound for isotropic solutions can be violated, with the ratio depending on the mass and charge.

We calculate photon sphere and critical curve for a quantum corrected Schwarzschild black hole, finding that they violate universal inequalities proved for asymptotically flat black holes that satisfy the null energy condition in the framework of Einstein gravity. This violation seems to be a common phenomenon when considering quantum modification of Einstein gravity. Furthermore, we study the shadows, lensing rings, and photon rings in the quantum corrected Schwarzschild black hole. The violation leads to a larger bright lensing ring in the observational appearance of the thin disk emission near the black hole compared with the classical Schwarzschild black hole. Our analysis may provide observational evidence for the quantum effect of general relativity.

It has been proved that arbitrarily high-energy collision between two particles can occur near the horizon of an extremal Kerr black hole as long as the energy E and angular momentum L of one particle satisfies a critical relation, which is called the BSW mechanism.Previous researchers mainly concentrate on geodesic motion of particles. In this paper, we will take spinning particle which won't move along a timelike geodesic into our consideration, hence, another parameter s describing the particle's spin angular momentum was introduced. By employing the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon equation describing the movement of spinning particle, we will explore whether a Kerr-Sen black hole which is slightly different from Kerr black hole can be used to accelerate a spinning particle to arbitrarily high energy. We found that when one of the two colliding particles satisfies a critical relation between the energy E and the total angular momentum J, or has a critical spinning angular momentum s c , a divergence of the center-of-mass energy E cm will be obtained.