Anti-de-Sitter black hole thermodynamics in higher derivative gravity and new confining–deconfining phases in dual CFT

The thermodynamics of d5 AdS BHs with positive, negative or zero curvature spatial section in higher derivative (HD) gravity is described. HD contribution to free energy may change its sign which leads to more complicated regime for Hawking–Page phase transitions. Some variant of d5 HD gravity is dual to N=2 Sp(N) SCFT up to the next-to-leading order in large N. Then, according to Witten interpretation the stable AdS BH phase corresponds to deconfinement while global AdS phase corresponds to confinement. Unlike to Einstein gravity in HD theory the critical N appears. It may influence the phase transition structure. In particular, what was confining phase above the critical value becomes the deconfining phase below it and vice-versa.