Generalized free energy landscape of a black hole phase transition

Abstract

Recently, the stochastic dynamical model based on the free energy landscape was proposed to quantify the kinetics of the black hole phase transition. An essential concept is the generalized free energy of the fluctuating black hole, which was defined in terms of the thermodynamic relation previously. In this work, by employing the Gibbons-Hawking path integral approach to black hole thermodynamics, we show that the generalized free energy can be derived from the Einstein-Hilbert action of the Euclidean gravitational instanton with the conical singularity. This work provides a concrete and solid foundation for the free energy landscape formalism of black hole phase transition.