Thermodynamics of the 3-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell system

Abstract

Recently, I studied the thermodynamical properties of the Einstein-Maxwell system with a box boundary in 4-dimensions [1](JHEP 04 (2024) 083). In this paper, I investigate those in 3-dimensions using the zero-loop saddle-point approximation and focusing only on a simple topology sector as usual. Similar to the 4-dimensional case, the system is thermodynamically well-behaved when $\Lambda<0$ (due to the contribution of the "bag of gold" saddles). However, when $\Lambda=0$, a crucial difference to the 4-dimensional case appears, i.e. the 3-dimensional system turns out to be thermodynamically unstable, while the 4-dimensional one is thermodynamically stable. This may offer two options for how we think about the thermodynamics of 3-dimensional gravity with $\Lambda=0$. One is that the zero-loop approximation or restricting the simple topology sector is not sufficient for 3-dimensions with $\Lambda=0$. The other is that 3-dimensional gravity is really thermodynamically unstable when $\Lambda=0$.