The Extended Thermodynamic Phase Structure of Taub-NUT and Taub-Bolt

Abstract

We study aspects of the extended gravitational thermodynamics for the Taub-NUT and Taub-Bolt geometries in four dimensional locally anti-de Sitter spacetime, where the cosmological constant is treated as a dynamical pressure. Attention is paid to the phase structure in the (p,T) plane, which has a line of first order phase transitions extending from the origin. We argue for a dynamical interpretation of the unstable physics in the negative specific heat region. A deformation corresponding to a dyonic Taub-NUT/Bolt system is also explored, and the effect of the deformation on the phase diagram is characterised.