Cloud of strings for radiating black holes in Lovelock gravity

Abstract: We present exact spherically symmetric null dust solutions in the third order Lovelock gravity with a string cloud background in arbitrary $N$ dimensions,. This represents radiating black holes and generalizes the well known Vaidya solution to Lovelock gravity with a string cloud in the background. We also discuss the energy conditions and horizon structures, and explicitly bring out the effect of the string clouds on the horizon structure of black hole solutions for the higher dimensional general relativity and Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theories. It turns out that the presence of the coupling constant of the Gauss-Bonnet terms and/or background string clouds completely changes the structure of the horizon and this may lead to a naked singularity. We recover known spherically symmetric radiating models as well as static black holes in the appropriate limits.