Eluding the No-Hair Conjecture for Black Holes

I discuss a recent analytic proof of bypassing the no-hair conjecture for two interesting (and quite generic) cases of four-dimensional black holes: (i) black holes in Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs (EYMH) systems and (ii) black holes in higher-curvature (Gauss-Bonnet (GB) type) string-inspired gravity. Both systems are known to possess black-hole solutions with non-trivial scalar hair outside the horizon. The `spirit’ of the no-hair conjecture, however, seems to be maintained either because the black holes are unstable (EYMH), or because the hair is of secondary type (GB), i.e. it does not lead to new conserved quantum numbers.