Collider production of TeV scale black holes and higher-curvature gravity

We examine how the production of TeV scale black holes at colliders isinfluenced by the presence of Lovelock higher-curvature terms in the action ofmodels with large extra dimensions. Such terms are expected to arise on rathergeneral grounds, e.g., from string theory and are often used in the literatureto model modifications to the Einstein-Hilbert action arising from quantumand/or stringy corrections. While adding the invariant which is quadratic inthe curvature leads to quantitative modifications in black hole properties,cubic and higher invariants are found to produce significant qualitativechanges, e.g., classically stable black holes. We use these higher-ordercurvature terms to construct a toy model of the black hole production crosssection threshold. For reasonable parameter values we demonstrate that detailedmeasurements of the properties of black holes at future colliders will behighly sensitive to the presence of the Lovelock higher-order curvature terms.Comment: 37 pages, 11 figures, references adde