Photon orbits and phase transitions in Born-Infeld-dilaton black holes

Relations between photon orbits and thermodynamical phase transitions are explored in Born-Infeld-dilaton-AdS black hole. The coupling between the electromagnetic field and the dialton field is chosen such that the full phase diagram contains zeroth-order and first-order phase transitions as well as RPT. We find that there exist non-monotonic beahviors of the photon orbit radius $r_{ps}$ and the minimum impact parameter $u_{ps}$ which signal the existence of the various phase transitions. In particular, the marginal value of pressure under which RPT occur can be read off from these behaviors. Along the co-existing lines, there are changes of both $r_{ps}$ and $u_{ps}$, whose dependence on the transition temperature show characteristic behaviors signalling the existence of RPT. Moreover, the critical exponents of $\Delta r_{ps}$ and $\Delta u_{ps}$ are found to take a universal value $\frac{1}{2}$. These results imply that $r_{ps}$ and $u_{ps}$ can be used as order parameters to describe BH phase transitions.