Critical Phenomena of Charged de Sitter Black Holes in Cavities

Abstract

We examine the thermodynamic behaviour of four-dimensional charged and uncharged de Sitter black holes enclosed in an isothermal cavity, in the extended phase space where the cosmological constant is treated as a thermodynamic pressure. We demonstrate the presence of a novel pressure-dependent phase transition in a compact region of phase space that does not appear in asymptotically anti-de Sitter black holes, and find a highly non-linear equation of state that does not lead to the usual interpretation of a van der Waals fluid.