Dynamical black hole entropy beyond general relativity from the Einstein frame

Abstract

Recently Hollands proposed a new formula for the entropy of a dynamical black hole for an arbitrary theory of gravity obtained from a diffeomorphism covariant Lagrangian via the Noether charge method []. We present an alternative, pedagogical derivation of the dynamical black hole entropy for f(R) gravity as well as canonical scalar-tensor theory by means of conformal transformations. First, in general relativity we generalize Visser and Yan’s pedagogical proof of the nonstationary physical process first law to black holes that may not be in vacuum, and give a pedagogical derivation of the second-order behavior of the dynamical black hole entropy for vacuum perturbations by considering the second-order variation of the Raychaudhuri equation. Second, we apply the derivation for general relativity to theories in the Einstein frames, and then recast the conclusions in their original frames. We show that the dynamical black hole entropy formulas of these theories satisfy both the nonstationary physical process first law and the nonstationary comparison first law via the Einstein frame. We further study the second-order behavior of the dynamical black hole entropy for vacuum perturbations, and observe that the second law is obeyed at second order in those theories. Using the Einstein frame, we also determine the relationship between the dynamical black hole entropy and the Wald entropy of the generalized apparent horizon in the original frame. Published by the American Physical Society 2025