Phase Transitions in Warped AdS$_3$ Gravity

Understand

We consider asymptotically Warped AdS$_3$ black holes in Topologically Massive Gravity.

• We study their thermodynamic stability and show the existence of a Hawking-Page phase transition between the black hole and thermal background phases.
• At zero angular potential, the latter is shown to occur at the self-dual point of the dual Warped Conformal Field Theory partition function, in analogy with the phase transition for BTZ black holes in AdS$_3$/CFT$_2$.
• We also discuss how the central and vacuum charges can be obtained from inner horizon mechanics in the presence of a gravitational anomaly.