Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant as a free thermodynamical variable and the associated criticality

Abstract: The thermodynamic phase space of Gauss-Bonnet (GB) AdS black holes is extended, taking the inverse of the GB coupling constant as a new thermodynamic pressure $P_{\mathrm{GB}}$. We studied the critical behavior associated with $P_{\mathrm{GB}}$ in the extended thermodynamic phase space at fixed cosmological constant and electric charge. The result shows that when the black holes are neutral, the associated critical points can only exist in five dimensional GB-AdS black holes with spherical topology, and the corresponding critical exponents are identical to those for Van der Waals system. For charged GB-AdS black holes, it is shown that there can be only one critical point in five dimensions (for black holes with either spherical or hyperbolic topologies), which also requires the electric charge to be bounded within some appropriate range; while in $d>5$ dimensions, there can be up to two different critical points at the same electric charge, and the phase transition can occur only at temperatures which are not in between the two critical values.