Massless charged particles: Cosmic censorship, and the third law of black hole mechanics

Abstract

The formulation of the laws of black hole mechanics assumes the stability of black holes under perturbations in accordance with the "cosmic censorship hypothesis"(CCH). CCH prohibits the formation of a naked singularity by a physical process from a regular black hole solution with an event horizon. Earlier studies show that naked singularities can indeed be formed leading to the violation of CCH if a near-extremal black hole is injected with massive charged particles and the back reaction effects are neglected. We investigate the validity of CCH by considering the infall of charged massless particles as well as a charged null shell. We also discuss the issue of third law of black hole mechanics in the presence of null charged particles by considering various possibilities.