Electron star birth: A continuous phase transition at nonzero density

Abstract

We show that charged black holes in Anti-de Sitter spacetime can undergo a third order phase transition at a critical temperature in the presence of charged fermions. In the low temperature phase, a fraction of the charge is carried by a fermion fluid located a finite distance from the black hole. In the zero temperature limit the black hole is no longer present and all charge is sourced by the fermions. The solutions exhibit the low temperature entropy density scaling s~T^{2/z} anticipated from the emergent IR criticality of recently discussed electron stars.