Universality of isothermal fluid spheres in Lovelock gravity

Abstract

We show universality of isothermal fluid spheres in pure Lovelock gravity where the equation of motion has only one $N$th order term coming from the corresponding Lovelock polynomial action of degree $N$. Isothermality is characterized by the equation of state, $p = \alpha \rho$ and the property, $\rho \sim 1/r^{2N}$. Then the solution describing isothermal spheres, which exist only for the pure Lovelock equation, is of the same form for the general Lovelock degree $N$ in all dimenions $d \geq 2N+2$. We further prove that the necessary and sufficient condition for the isothermal sphere is that its metric is conformal to the massless global monopole or the solid angle deficit metric, and this feature is also universal.