The Penrose strong cosmic censorship conjecture asserts that Cauchy horizons inside dynamically formed black holes are unstable to remnant matter fields that fall into the black holes. The physical importance of this conjecture stems from the fact that it provides a necessary condition for general relativity to be a truly deterministic theory of gravity. Determining the fate of the Penrose conjecture in non-asymptotically flat black-hole spacetimes has been the focus of intense research efforts in recent years. In the present essay we provide a remarkably compact proof, which is based on Bekenstein's generalized second law of thermodynamics, for the validity of the intriguing Penrose conjecture in physically realistic (dynamically formed) curved black-hole spacetimes.
A very interesting work that has recently appeared in the physics literature [arXiv:1810.00886] claims that the strong cosmic censorship conjecture, a fundamental cornerstone of black-hole physics, may be violated in asymptotically de Sitter charged spacetimes. In this short Comment I would like to point out that this conclusion cannot be self-consistently deduced from the numerical simulations presented in arXiv:1810.00886.
We analyze the Hawking evaporation process of Reissner-Nordström black holes. It is shown that the characteristic radiation quanta emitted by the charged black holes may turn near-extremal black-hole spacetimes into horizonless naked singularities. The present analysis therefore reveals the intriguing possibility that the semi-classical Hawking evaporation process of black holes may violate the fundamental Penrose cosmic censorship conjecture.
We reexamine our proposed counterexample (gr-qc/0307102) to cosmic censorship in anti de Sitter (AdS) space, and find a gap in the construction. We mention some possible ways to close the gap, but at present the question of whether cosmic censorship is violated in AdS remains open.
A surprising connection between the weak gravity conjecture and cosmic censorship has recently been proposed. In particular, it was argued that a promising class of counterexamples to cosmic censorship in four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-$Λ$ theory would be removed if charged particles (with sufficient charge) were present. We test this idea and find that indeed if the weak gravity conjecture is true, one cannot violate cosmic censorship this way. Remarkably, the minimum value of charge required to preserve cosmic censorship appears to agree precisely with that proposed by the weak gravity co…
The semi-classical Hawking evaporation process of Reissner-Nordström black holes is analyzed. It is shown that this quantum mechanism may turn a near-extremal black-hole spacetime with $T_{\text{BH}}\lesssim \hbar^2/G^2M^3$ into an horizonless naked singularity, thus violating the Penrose cosmic censorship conjecture. It is therefore conjectured that, within the framework of a self-consistent quantum theory of gravity, the Bekenstein-Hawking temperature should be bounded from below by the simple relation $T_{\text{BH}}\gtrsim \hbar^2/G^2M^3$.
The strong cosmic censorship conjecture, introduced by Penrose five decades ago, asserts that, in self-consistent theories of gravity, Cauchy horizons inside dynamically formed black holes should be unstable to remnant perturbation fields that fall into the newly born black holes. The question of the (in)validity of this intriguing conjecture in non-asymptotically flat charged black-hole spacetimes has recently attracted much attention from physicists and mathematicians. We here provide a general proof, which is based on Bekenstein's generalized second law of thermodynamics, for the validity o…
The strong cosmic censorship has recently been put into question for the charged black holes in de Sitter space. We have performed the full non-linear evolution of the massless charged scalar field minimally coupled to the Einstein-Maxwell system in de Sitter space, and found that the non-linear effect can restore the strong cosmic censorship, making it as strong as ever.
It has been shown recently that the strong cosmic censorship conjecture is violated by near-extremal Reissner-Nordström-de Sitter black holes. We investigate whether the introduction of a charged scalar field can rescue strong cosmic censorship. We find that such a field improves the situation but there is always a neighbourhood of extremality in which strong cosmic censorship is violated by perturbations arising from smooth initial data.
A numerical simulation is presented here of the evolution of initial data of the kind that was conjectured by Hertog, Horowitz and Maeda to be a violation of cosmic censorship. That initial data is essentially a thick domain wall connecting two regions of anti-deSitter space. The initial data has a free parameter that is the initial size of the wall. The simulation shows no violation of cosmic censorship, but rather the formation of a small black hole. The simulation described here is for a moderate wall size and leaves open the possibility that cosmic censorship might be violated for larger w…
It was recently shown that Strong Cosmic Censorship might be violated for near-extremally-charged black holes in 4-dimensional de Sitter space under scalar perturbations. Here, we extend the study of neutral massless scalar perturbations in higher dimensions and discuss the dimensional influence on the validity of Strong Cosmic Censorship hypothesis. By giving an elaborate description of neutral massless scalar perturbations of Reissner-Nordström-de Sitter black holes in $d=4,5$ and $6$ dimensions we conclude that Strong Cosmic Censorship is violated near extremality.
Recently Hertog, Horowitz, and Maeda have argued that cosmic censorship can be generically violated in string theory in anti-de Sitter spacetime by considering a collapsing bubble of a scalar field whose mass saturates the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. We study this system numerically and find that for various choices of initial data black holes form rather than naked singularities, implying that in these cases cosmic censorship is upheld.
We investigate extremal electrically charged black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory with a cosmological constant inspired by string theory. These solutions are not static, and a timelike singularity eventually appears which is not surrounded by an event horizon. This suggests that cosmic censorship may be violated in this theory.
We have recently shown that a class of counterexamples to (weak) cosmic censorship in anti-de Sitter spacetime is removed if the weak gravity conjecture holds. Surprisingly, the minimum value of the charge to mass ratio necessary to preserve cosmic censorship is precisely the weak gravity bound. To further explore this mysterious connection, we investigate two generalizations: adding a dilaton or an additional Maxwell field. Analogous counterexamples to cosmic censorship are found in these theories if there is no charged matter. Even though the weak gravity bound is modified, we show that in e…
After studying the energy-momentum relation of charged particles' Hamilton-Jacobi equations, we discuss the laws of thermodynamics and the weak cosmic censorship conjecture in torus-like black holes. We find that both the first law of thermodynamic as well as the weak cosmic censorship conjecture are valid in both the normal phase space and extended phase space. However, the second law of thermodynamics is only valid in the normal phase space. Our results show that the first law and weak cosmic censorship conjecture do not depend on the phase spaces while the second law depends. What's more, w…
Strong cosmic censorship conjecture has been one of the most important leap of faith in the context of general relativity, providing assurance in the deterministic nature of the associated field equations. Though it holds well for asymptotically flat spacetimes, a potential failure of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture might arise for spacetimes inheriting Cauchy horizon along with a positive cosmological constant. We have explicitly demonstrated that violation of the censorship conjecture holds true in the presence of a Maxwell field even when higher spacetime dimensions are invoked. In …
The quasinormal resonant modes of massless neutral fields in near-extremal Kerr-Newman-de Sitter black-hole spacetimes are calculated in the eikonal regime. It is explicitly proved that, in the angular momentum regime ${\bar a}> \sqrt{{1-2{\barΛ}\over{4+{\barΛ}/3}}}$, the black-hole spacetimes are characterized by slowly decaying resonant modes which are described by the compact formula $\Imω(n)=κ_+\cdot(n+{1\over2})$ [here the physical parameters $\{{\bar a},κ_+,{\barΛ},n\}$ are respectively the dimensionless angular momentum of the black hole, its characteristic surface gravity, the dimensio…
We consider time-dependent solutions of the Einstein-Maxwell equations using anti-de Sitter (AdS) boundary conditions, and provide the first counterexample to the weak cosmic censorship conjecture in four spacetime dimensions. Our counterexample is entirely formulated in the Poincaré patch of AdS. We claim that our results have important consequences for quantum gravity, most notably to the weak gravity conjecture.
We study the cosmic censorship of dynamical $p$-brane systems in a $D$-dimensional background. This is the generalization of the analysis in the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory, which was discussed by Horne and Horowitz [Phys. Rev. D 48, R5457 (1993)]. We show that a timelike curvature singularity generically appears from an asymptotic region in the time evolution of the $p$-brane solution. Since we can set regular and smooth initial data in a dynamical M5-brane system in 11-dimensional supergravity, this implies a violation of cosmic censorship.
We present a plausible counterexample to cosmic censorship in four dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory with asymptotically anti-de Sitter boundary conditions. Smooth initial data evolves to a region of arbitrarily large curvature that is visible to distant observers. Our example is based on a holographic model of an electrically charged, localised defect which was previously studied at zero temperature. We partially extend those results to nonzero temperatures.
The strong cosmic censorship conjecture, whose validation asserts the deterministic nature of general relativity, has been studied for charged BTZ black holes in three dimensional general relativity, as well as for Nth order pure Lovelock gravity in d=2N+1 spacetime dimensions. Through both analytical and numerical routes, we have computed the ratio of the imaginary part of the quasi-normal mode frequencies with the surface gravity at the Cauchy horizon. The lowest of which corresponds to the key parameter associated with violation of strong cosmic censorship conjecture. Our results demonstrat…
We test the validity of cosmic censorship in the rotating anti-de Sitter black hole. For this purpose, we investigate whether the extremal black hole can be overspun by the particle absorption. The particle absorption will change the mass and angular momentum of the black hole, which is analyzed using the Hamilton-Jacobi equations consistent with the laws of thermodynamics. We have found that the mass of the extremal black hole increases more than the angular momentum. Therefore, the outer horizon of the black hole still exists, and cosmic censorship is valid.
We investigate the validity of weak cosmic censorship conjecture for electrically charged black holes in the presence of gravity's rainbow under charged particle absorption. The rainbow effect is shown to play an important role when the black hole is modified by a particle carrying energy and electric charge. Remarkably, we prove that the rainbow-charged black hole can be overspun beyond the extremal condition under charged particle absorption. Further, it is demonstrated that the second law of thermodynamics and cosmic censorship conjecture are violated owing to the rainbow effect.
We explore the cosmic censorship in the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory following Wald's thought experiment to destroy a black hole by throwing in a test particle. We discover that at probe limit the extremal charged dilaton black hole could be destroyed by a test particle with specific energy. Nevertheless the censorship is well protected if backreaction or self-force is included. At the end, we discuss an interesting connection between Hoop Conjecture and Weak Gravity Conjecture.
We examine the laws of thermodynamics and the weak cosmic censorship conjecture in the normal and extended phase space of Born-Infeld-anti-de Sitter black hole by considering a charged particle absorption. In the normal phase space, the first and second law of thermodynamics as well as the weak cosmic censorship are still valid. However, in the extended phase space, the second law of thermodynamics is violated for double-horizon black holes and part of single-horizon black holes. The first law of thermodynamics and the weak cosmic censorship conjecture are still valid for all black holes. In a…
We investigate the strong cosmic censorship conjecture in lukewarm Reissner-Nordström-de Sitter black holes (and Martínez-Troncoso-Zanelli black holes) using the quasinormal resonance of non-minimally coupled massive scalar field. The strong cosmic censorship conjecture is closely related to the stability of the Cauchy horizon governed by the decay rate of the dominant quasinormal mode. Here, dominant modes are obtained in the limits of small and large mass black holes. Then, we connect the modes by using the WKB approximation. In our analysis, the strong cosmic censorship conjecture is valid …
As a charged spinning fermion drops into a charged rotating BTZ black hole, we investigate the laws of thermodynamics and weak cosmic censorship conjecture with and without pressure respectively. For the case without pressure, the first law, second law, as well as the weak cosmic censorship are found to be valid. While for the case with pressure, though the first law is still valid, the second law and the weak cosmic censorship conjecture are found to be violable, depending on the charge, angular momentum, AdS radius, and their variations. In addition, in both cases, the configurations of the …
The cosmic censorship hypothesis introduced by Penrose thirty years ago is still one of the most important open questions in {\it classical} general relativity. The main goal of this paper is to put forward the idea that cosmic censorship is intrinsically a {\it quantum} phenomena. We construct a gedanken experiment which seems to violate the cosmic censorship principle within the purely {\it classical} framework of general relativity. We prove, however, that {\it quantum} physics restores the validity of the conjecture. It is therefore suggested that cosmic censorship might be enforced by a q…
The cosmic censorship conjecture essentially states that naked singularities should not form from generic initial conditions. Since black hole parameters can change their values under Hawking evaporation, one has to ask whether it is possible to reach extremality by simply waiting for the black hole to evaporate. If so a slight perturbation would likely render the singularity naked. Fortunately, at least for the case of asymptotically flat 4-dimensional Reissner-Nordström black hole, Hiscock and Weems showed that it can never reach extremality despite the fact that for a sufficiently massive b…
We investigate the weak cosmic censorship conjecture in extremal and near-extremal Kerr-Newman-(anti-)de Sitter black holes by the scattering of a massive scalar field with an electric charge. Under this scattering, the scalar field fluxes change the black hole state, as determined by the mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. The black hole may exceed its extremal condition because of these changes. However, we find that the black hole cannot be overcharged or overspun by the scattering. In particular, although the fluxes are closely associated with the asymptotic boundary conditions al…
We analyze the null geodesic equations in five dimensional spherically symmetric spacetime with collapsing inhomogeneous dust cloud. By using a new method, we prove the existence and non-existence of solutions to null geodesic equation emanating from central singularity for smooth initial distribution of dust. Moreover, we also show that the null geodesics can extend to null infinity in a certain case, which imply the violation of cosmic censorship conjecture.
Numerical evidence suggests that the superradiant instability of Kerr-AdS black holes and "black resonators" evolves to smaller and smaller scales towards a "limiting" black resonator. Using $AdS_4$ supergravity, we argue that this putative endpoint to the superradiant instability does not exist.
This paper argues that the weak cosmic censorship hypothesis implies that the Schwarzschild black hole has maximal entropy in all stationary black holes of fixing temperature, or equivalently, to store a same amount of information the Schwarzschild black hole has highest temperature. It then gives the independent mathematical proofs for 4-dimensional general static black holes and stationary-axisymmetric black holes which have "$t$-$ϕ$" reflection isometry. This result does not only provide a new universal bound between temperature and entropy of black holes but also offers us new evidence to …
It has been argued that the strong cosmic censorship conjecture is violated by Reissner-Nordström-de Sitter black holes: for near-extremal black holes, generic scalar field perturbations arising from smooth initial data have finite energy at the Cauchy horizon even though they are not continuously differentiable there. In this paper, we consider the analogous problem for coupled gravitational and electromagnetic perturbations. We find that such perturbations exhibit a much worse violation of strong cosmic censorship: for a sufficiently large near-extremal black hole, perturbations arising from…
The ``cosmic censorship conjecture'' asserts that all singularities arising from gravitational collapse are hidden within black holes. We investigate this conjecture in a setup of interest for tests of General Relativity: black hole solutions which are parametrically small deviations away from the Kerr solution. These solutions have an upper bound on rotation, beyond which a naked singularity is visible to outside observers. We study whether these (generic) spacetimes can be spun-up past extremality with point particles or accretion disks. Our results show that cosmic censorship is preserved f…
We show that cosmic censorship takes an exceptionally complex and interesting form in the case of five-dimensional AdS-Kerr black holes, due to the unusually distant relation obtaining in that case between the black hole parameters and the physical mass and angular momentum. One finds that, in this case, censorship is less restrictive than one might hope: it apparently allows some rather bizarre behaviour, and in particular does not prohibit arbitrarily large angular momenta. We find however that most of the unwelcome geometries permitted by censorship can be eliminated by requiring stability …
The fate of strong cosmic censorship is ultimately linked to the extendibility of perturbation across the Cauchy Horizon and known to be violated in the near extremal region of a charged de Sitter black hole. Similar violations can also be realized in higher curvature theories, with the strength of violation becoming stronger as compared to general relativity. In this work, we extend this analysis further to study the validity of strong cosmic censorship conjecture in the context of the regularised four-dimensional Einstein Gauss-Bonnet theory with respect to both scalar and electromagnetic pe…
We show that the naked singularities arising in dust collapse from smooth initial data (which include those discovered by Eardley and Smarr, Christodoulou, and Newman) are removed when we make transition to higher dimensional spacetimes. The cosmic censorship is then restored for dust collapse which will always produce a black hole as the collapse end state for dimensions $D\ge6$, under conditions to be motivated physically such as the smoothness of initial data from which the collapse develops.
We numerically construct the stationary solutions of $SU(2)$ Einstein-Yang-Mills theory in four dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime. When the $t$ component of $SU(2)$ gauge field is taken to the only nonzero component, we construct a class of counterexamples to the weak cosmic censorship conjecture in Einstein-Maxwell theory. However, including a nonzero $ϕ$ component of $SU(2)$ gauge field, we can argue that there is a minimum value $q_W$, when the charge carried by the $ϕ$ component is larger than this minimum value, for sufficiently large boundary electric amplitude $a$, the original count…
We investigate the weak cosmic censorship conjecture for Kerr-Sen black holes, which are solutions to the four-dimensional low-energy effective field theory for the heterotic string theory, based on the scattering of a charged scalar field. When the fluxes of the scalar field are assumed to transfer its conserved quantities to the black hole, extremal and near-extremal black holes cannot be over-spun and over-charged in their first-order variations, which is sufficient to conclude that the weak cosmic censorship conjecture is valid for Kerr-Sen black holes. We confirm our conclusion by relatin…
We investigate the possibility of cosmic censorship violation in string theory using a characteristic double-null code, which penetrates horizons and is capable of resolving the spacetime all the way to the singularity. We perform high-resolution numerical simulations of the evolution of negative mass initial scalar field profiles, which were argued to provide a counterexample to cosmic censorship conjecture for AdS-asymptotic spacetimes in five-dimensional supergravity. In no instances formation of naked singularity is seen. Instead, numerical evidence indicates that black holes form in the c…
We consider (four dimensional) gravity coupled to a scalar field with potential V(ϕ). The potential satisfies the positive energy theorem for solutions that asymptotically tend to a negative local minimum. We show that for a large class of such potentials, there is an open set of smooth initial data that evolve to naked singularities. Hence cosmic censorship does not hold for certain reasonable matter theories in asymptotically anti de Sitter spacetimes. The asymptotically flat case is more subtle. We suspect that potentials with a local Minkowski minimum may similarly lead to violations of co…
Some interesting consequences of spacelike matter shells are presented, in particular the possibility of travelling through Cauchy horizons and violating the strong cosmic censorship principle. These show that the weak energy condition does not guarentee cosmic censorship.
The first law of black hole thermodynamics in the extended phase space is prevailing recently. However, the second law as well as the weak cosmic censorship conjecture has not been investigated extensively. In this paper, we investigate the laws of thermodynamics and the weak cosmic censorship conjecture of an AdS black hole with a global monopole in the extended phase space under a charged particle absorption. It is shown that the first law of thermodynamics is valid, while the second law is violated for the extremal and near-extremal black holes. Moreover, we find the weak cosmic censorship …
Recent work indicates that the strong cosmic censorship hypothesis is violated by nearly extremal Reissner-Nordstrom-de Sitter black holes. It was argued that perturbations of such a black hole decay sufficiently rapidly that the perturbed spacetime can be extended across the Cauchy horizon as a weak solution of the equations of motion. In this paper we consider the case of Kerr-de Sitter black holes. We find that, for any non-extremal value of the black hole parameters, there are quasinormal modes which decay sufficiently slowly to ensure that strong cosmic censorship is respected. Our analys…
We check the weak cosmic censorship conjecture by attempting to overspin the Kerr-Newman-Kasuya black hole with test particle. The study suggests that the Kerr-Newman-Kasuya black hole can be over-spun showing the violation of cosmic censorship conjecture.
We consider the question of strong cosmic censorship in spatially compact, spatially locally homogeneous vacuum models. We show in particular that strong cosmic censorship holds in Bianchi IX vacuum space--times with spherical spatial topology.
We review the status of the weak cosmic censorship conjecture, which asserts, in essence, that all singularities of gravitational collapse are hidden within black holes. Although little progress has been made toward a general proof (or disproof) of this conjecture, there has been some notable recent progress in the study of some examples and special cases related to the conjecture. These results support the view that naked singularities cannot arise generically.
Recently it has been shown that quantum fields can be regular on the inner, Cauchy horizon of a rotating BTZ black hole, which appears to indicate a failure of strong cosmic censorship. We argue that, instead, what these results imply is that the inner horizon remains non-singular when leading-order backreaction of the quantum fields is computed, but, after next-order backreaction is accounted for, it will become singular. Then, strong cosmic censorship will be enforced in the BTZ black hole. We support our claims using a four-dimensional holographic dual of the system, which connects the inst…
We study the behaviour of a free massive scalar wave-packet near the Cauchy horizon of an $\mathrm{AdS}_2$ black hole and find that it becomes infinitely differentiable for smooth initial data, independently of the parameters describing the spacetime or the scalar. This indicates a violation of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture at the classical level. We discuss our result in connection with some recent observations of violation of the conjecture for certain nearly extremal black holes.
We first calculate equations of motion for particles in the Kerr-Sen-de Sitter black hole spacetime. Then in the eikonal regime, we analytically obtain the quasi-normal resonant modes of massless neutral scalar field perturbation and find its imaginary part to be characterized by the surface gravity of the near-extremal Kerr-Sen-de Sitter black hole with Cauchy horizon approaching the event horizon. We further show that the Penrose strong cosmic censorship conjecture is thus respected in this spacetime with dilaton scalar field and axion pseudoscalar field.
We investigate the instability of the unstable circular orbit of a charged null particle to test the strong cosmic censorship conjecture in Nariai-type near-extremal Reissner--Nordström--de Sitter black holes. The instability is estimated as the Lyapunov exponent and found to depend on the mass and charge of the black hole. Then, we explicitly show that charged null particles in unstable circular orbits correspond to the charged massless scalar field in the eikonal limit. This provides a compact relationship representing the quasinormal frequency in terms of the characteristics of unstable cir…
We show that, contrary to a widespread belief, one can overcharge a near extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black hole by throwing in a charged particle, as long as the backreaction effects may be considered negligible. Furthermore, we find that we can make the particle's classical radius, mass, and charge, as well as the relative size of the backreaction terms arbitrarily small, by adjusting the parameters corresponding to the particle appropriately. This suggests that the question of cosmic censorship is still not wholly resolved even in this simple scenario. We contrast this with attempting to ove…
The cosmic censorship hypothesis introduced by Penrose thirty years ago is still one of the most important open questions in {\it classical} general relativity. In this essay we put forward the idea that cosmic censorship is intrinsically a {\it quantum gravity} phenomena. To that end we construct a gedanken experiment in which cosmic censorship is violated within the purely {\it classical} framework of general relativity. We prove, however, that {\it quantum} effects restore the validity of the conjecture. This suggests that classical general relativity is inconsistent and that cosmic censors…
Considering the cosmological constant as the pressure, we mainly study the laws of thermodynamics and weak cosmic censorship conjecture in the Reissner-Nordström-AdS black hole surrounded by quintessence dark energy under charged particle absorption. The first law of thermodynamics is found to be valid as a particle is absorbed by the black hole. The second law however is found to be violated for the extremal and near-extremal black holes since the entropy of these black hole decrease. Moreover, we find that the extremal black hole do not change it configuration in the extended phase space, im…
We argue that cosmic censorship is violated in the collision of two black holes in high spacetime dimension D when the initial total angular momentum is sufficiently large. The two black holes merge and form an unstable bar-like horizon, which grows a neck in its middle that pinches down with diverging curvature. When D is large, the emission of gravitational radiation is strongly suppressed and cannot spin down the system to a stable rotating black hole before the neck grows. The phenomenon is demonstrated using simple numerical simulations of the effective theory in the 1/D expansion. We pro…
Recently, it was argued in [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf126}, 031102 (2021)] that the WCCC can serve as a constraint to high-order effective field theories. However, we find there exists a key error in their approximate black hole solution. After correcting it, their calculation cannot show the ability of WCCC to constrain the gravitational theories.
We study the dynamical behavior of spinor particles, and get the energy-momentum relation of charged particles by solving the Dirac equation. Based on the energy-momentum relation, we investigate the laws of thermodynamics and the weak cosmic censorship conjecture for the (2+1)-dimensional regular black hole with nonlinear electrodynamics sources in the normal phase space and the extended phase space. Our results show that the first law of thermodynamics as well as the weak cosmic censorship conjecture are valid in both the phase spaces. However, the second law of thermodynamics is violated in…
