Surface term, Virasoro algebra, and Wald entropy of black holes in higher-curvature gravity

Recently, in the Einstein gravity, Majhi and Padmanabhan proposed a straightforward and transparent way in obtaining the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy by using the approach based on the Virasoro algebra and central charge. In this work, we generalize their approach to the modified gravity with higher curvature corrections and show that their approach can successfully lead to the corresponding Wald entropy in the higher curvature gravity. Our result shows that the approach is physically general.