Hairy black holes in N=2 gauged supergravity

Abstract: We construct black holes with scalar hair in a wide class of four-dimensional N=2 Fayet-Iliopoulos gauged supergravity theories that are characterized by a prepotential containing one free parameter. Considering the truncated model in which only a single real scalar survives, the theory is reduced to an Einstein-scalar system with a potential, which admits at most two AdS critical points and is expressed in terms of a real superpotential. Our solution is static, admits maximally symmetric horizons, asymptotically tends to AdS space corresponding to an extremum of the superpotential, but is disconnected from the Schwarzschild-AdS family. The condition under which the spacetime admits an event horizon is addressed for each horizon topology. It turns out that for hyperbolic horizons the black holes can be extremal. In this case, the near-horizon geometry is AdS_2 x H^2, where the scalar goes to the other, non-supersymmetric, critical point of the potential. Our solution displays fall-off behaviours different from the standard one, due to the fact that the mass parameter $m^2=-2/\ell^2$ at the supersymmetric vacuum lies in a characteristic range $m^2_{BF}\le m^2\le m^2_{\rm BF}+\ell^{-2}$ for which the slowly decaying scalar field is also normalizable. Nevertheless, we identify a well-defined mass for our spacetime, following the prescription of Hertog and Maeda. Quite remarkably, the product of all horizon areas is not given in terms of the asymptotic cosmological constant alone, as one would expect in absence of electromagnetic charges and angular momentum. Our solution shows qualitatively the same thermodynamic behaviour as the Schwarzschild-AdS black hole, but the entropy is always smaller for a given mass and AdS curvature radius. We also find that our spherical black holes are unstable against radial perturbations.