We examine the circuit complexity of coherent states in a free scalar field theory, applying Nielsen's geometric approach as in [1]. The complexity of the coherent states have the same UV divergences as the vacuum state complexity and so we consider the finite increase of the complexity of these states over the vacuum state. One observation is that generally, the optimal circuits introduce entanglement between the normal modes at intermediate stages even though our reference state and target states are not entangled in this basis. We also compare our results from Nielsen's approach with those found using the Fubini-Study method of [2]. For general coherent states, we find that the complexities, as well as the optimal circuits, derived from these two approaches, are different. 11 Of course, a ± are the same quantities which already appeared in eq. (2.14). 12 Here, we assume the definition of 'arccosh' is such that it always yields a positive result.

Recently, a novel 4D Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity was formulated by Glavan and Lin (Phys Rev Lett 124(8):081301, 2020). Although whether the theory is well defined is currently debatable, the spherically symmetric black hole solution is still meaningful and worthy of study. In this paper, we study the geodesic motions in the spacetime of the spherically symmetric black hole solution. First of all, we find that a negative GB coupling constant is allowable, as in which case the singular behavior of the black hole can be hidden inside the event horizon. Then we calculate the innermost stable circular orbits for massive particles, which turn out to be monotonic decreasing functions of the GB coupling constant. Furthermore, we study the unstable photon sphere and shadow of the black hole. It is interesting to find that the proposed universal bounds on black hole size in Lu and Lyu (Phys Rev D 101(4):044059, 2020) recently can be broken when the GB coupling constant takes a negative value.

We study the influence of the cosmic expansion on the size of the shadow of a spinning black hole observed by a comoving observer. We first consider that the expansion is driven by a cosmological constant only and build the connection between the Kerr-de Sitter metric and the FLRW metric. We then calculate the angular size of the shadow for an observer comoving with the cosmic expansion. Furthermore, by adopting the approximate method proposed in [48] we extend the study to the general multi-component universe case. It is interesting to find that the oblateness of the black hole shadow, namely the ratio of the horizontal and vertical angular radii, becomes significant in the case that the black hole is at a high redshift.

We study the shadows cast by near-extremal Kerr-MOG black holes for different values of the parameter in modified gravity (MOG). In particular, we consider an isotropic emitter orbiting near such black holes and analytically compute the positions, fluxes and redshift factors of their images. The size of the shadow decreases when the modified parameter is increased. For each shadow, the images of the emitter appear on a special part of the shadow which has a rich structure. The primary image and secondary images are similar to those produced for the near-extremal (high spin) Kerr black hole, but the near-extremal Kerr-MOG black hole can have a spin (Ĵ/M 2 α ) which is finitely lower than 1. When the modified parameter is varied, the typical positions of the corresponding images do not change, nor does the typical redshift factor associated with the primary image. However, another typical redshift factor associated with the secondary image increases when the modified parameter is increased. We also find that the fluxes increase in that case. These images appear periodically with period greater than that of Kerr. This provides an alternative signature away from the Kerr case which may be tested by the Event Horizon Telescope. arXiv:1806.05249v2 [gr-qc] 9 Nov 2018