Black Hole Hair in Generalized Scalar-Tensor Gravity

The most general action for a scalar field coupled to gravity that leads to second-order field equations for both the metric and the scalar—Horndeski’s theory—is considered, with the extra assumption that the scalar satisfies shift symmetry. We show that in such theories, the scalar field is forced to have a nontrivial configuration in black hole spacetimes, unless one carefully tunes away a linear coupling with the Gauss-Bonnet invariant. Hence, black holes for generic theories in this class will have hair. This contradicts a recent no-hair theorem which seems to have overlooked the presence of this coupling.