We present a variational formulation of Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory in flat spacetime, when the asymptotic value of the scalar field is not fixed. We obtain the boundary terms that make the variational principle well posed and then compute the finite gravitational action and corresponding Brown-York stress tensor. We show that the total energy has a new contribution that depends of the asymptotic value of the scalar field and discuss the role of scalar charges for the first law of thermodynamics. We also extend our analysis to hairy black holes in Anti-de Sitter spacetime and investigate the thermodynamics of an exact solution that breaks the conformal symmetry of the boundary.1 Some recent interesting applications can be found in [1-6].

We revisit the first law of black hole thermodynamics in 4-dimensional theories containing scalar and Abelian vector fields coupled to gravity using Wald’s formalism and a new definition of scalar charge as an integral over a 2-surface which satisfies a Gauss law in the background of stationary black-hole spacetimes. We focus on ungauged supergravity-inspired theories with symmetric sigma models whose symmetries generate electric-magnetic dualities leaving invariant their equations of motion. Our manifestly duality-invariant form of the first law is compatible with the one obtained by of Gibbons, Kallosh and Kol. We also obtain the general expression for the scalar charges of a stationary black hole in terms of the other physical parameters of the solution and the position of the horizon, generalizing the expression obtained by Pacilio for dilaton black holes.