  Using a Hamiltonian treatment, charged thin shells in spherically symmetric
spacetimes in d dimensional Lovelock-Maxwell theory are studied. The
coefficients of the theory are chosen to obtain a sensible theory, with a
negative cosmological constant appearing naturally. After writing the action
and the Lagrangian for a spacetime comprised of an interior and an exterior
regions, with a thin shell as a boundary in between, one finds the Hamiltonian
using an ADM description. For spherically symmetric spacetimes, one reduces the
relevant constraints. The dynamic and constraint equations are obtained. The
vacuum solutions yield a division of the theory into two branches, d-2k-1>0
(which includes general relativity, Born-Infeld type theories) and d-2k-1=0
(which includes Chern-Simons type theories), where k gives the highest power of
the curvature in the Lagrangian. An additional parameter, chi, gives the
character of the vacuum solutions. For chi=1 the solutions have a black hole
character. For chi=-1 the solutions have a totally naked singularity character.
The integration through the thin shell takes care of the smooth junction. The
subsequent analysis is divided into two cases: static charged thin shell
configurations, and gravitationally collapsing charged dust shells. Physical
implications are drawn: if such a large extra dimension scenario is correct,
one can extract enough information from the outcome of those collapses as to
know, not only the actual dimension of spacetime, but also which particular
Lovelock gravity, is the correct one.
