3d Lovelock gravity and the holographic c-theorem: Proof at all orders and resummation

Abstract

We prove that 3d Lovelock gravity, the Horndeski theory obtained from the regularized Lovelock invariants in three dimensions, admits a holographic c-theorem at all orders and for arbitrary values of the couplings. In the minisuperspace of domain wall solutions, the equation of the Horndeski scalar is a total derivative at every order, which locks the derivative of the scalar to that of the warp factor along the flows we consider and allows the null energy condition to be integrated into a monotonic c-function. The linear scalar profile of the resulting vacuum breaks the special conformal transformations, so the dual theory is scale-invariant but not conformal, and the central charge is defined as the coefficient of the logarithmic divergence of the on-shell action on the sphere. We compute it exactly for the Gauss-Bonnet case and asymptotically for the full tower, and find that it is linear in the couplings and matches the UV value of the c-function. Since all results depend on the couplings only through two generating functions, we give the resummed Lagrangians, c-functions and central charges in closed form for the choices of couplings that lead to regular black holes, and classify the resummed theories by the positivity of the effective Newton constant on the vacuum and the uniqueness of the vacuum with a non-trivial scalar.