Thermodynamics of Kerr-Newman-AdS black holes and conformal field theories

We study the thermodynamics of four-dimensional Kerr-Newman-AdS black holes both in the canonical and the grand-canonical ensemble. The stability conditions are investigated, and the complete phase diagrams are obtained, which include the Hawking-Page phase transition in the grand-canonical ensemble. In the canonical case, one has a first-order transition between small and large black holes, which disappears for a sufficiently large electric charge or angular momentum. This disappearance corresponds to a critical point in the phase diagram. Via the AdS/CFT conjecture, the obtained phase structure is also relevant for the corresponding conformal held theory living in a rotating Einstein universe, in the presence of a global background U(1) current. An interesting limit arises when the black holes presence some supersymmetry. These BPS black holes correspond to highly degenerate zero-temperature stares in the dual CFT, which lives in an Einstein universe rotating with the speed of light.