Strong Cosmic Censorship Research Articles

Stability of the Cauchy horizon in accelerating black-hole spacetimes

The extendibility of spacetime and the existence of weak solutions to the Einstein field equations beyond Cauchy horizons, is a crucial ingredient to examine the limits of General Relativity. Strong Cosmic Censorship serves as a firewall for gravitation by demanding inextendibility of spacetime beyond the Cauchy horizon. For asymptotically flat spacetimes, the predominance of the blueshift instability and the subsequent formation of a mass-inflation singularity at the Cauchy horizon have, so far, substantiated the conjecture. Accelerating black holes, described by the $C-$metric, are exact solutions of the field equations without a cosmological constant, which possess an acceleration horizon with similar causal properties to the cosmological horizon of de Sitter spacetime. Here, by considering linear scalar field perturbations, we provide numerical evidence for the stability of the Cauchy horizon of charged accelerating black holes. In particular, we show that the stability of Cauchy horizons in accelerating charged black holes is connected to quasinormal modes, we discuss the regularity requirement for which weak solutions to the field equations exist at the Cauchy horizon and show that Strong Cosmic Censorship may be violated near extremality.

Quasinormal modes and strong cosmic censorship in the regularised 4D Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet gravity

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 perturbation. We also study the late time tails of scalar fields.

Quantum stress tensor at the Cauchy horizon of the Reissner–Nordström–de Sitter spacetime

The strong cosmic censorship conjecture proposes that starting from generic initial data on some Cauchy surface, the solutions of the Einstein equation should not be extendable across the boundary of the domain of dependence of that surface. For the case of the Reissner--Nordstr\"om--de Sitter spacetime this means that any perturbation should blow up sufficiently badly when approaching this boundary, called the Cauchy horizon. However, recent results indicate that for highly charged black holes classical scalar perturbations allow for a violation of strong cosmic censorship. In a recent paper [S. Hollands et al., Classical Quantum Gravity 37, 115009 (2020)], two of us have argued that quantum effects will restore censorship for generic values of the black-hole parameters. But, due to practical limitations, the precise form of the divergence was only calculated for a small number of parameters. Here we perform a thorough parameter scan using an alternative, more efficient semianalytic method. Our analysis confirms [S. Hollands et al., Classical Quantum Gravity 37, 115009 (2020)] in the sense that the quantum stress tensor is found to diverge badly generically. However, the sign of the divergence can be changed by changing the mass of the field or the spacetime parameters, leading to a drastically different type of singularity on the Cauchy horizon.

Quasi-normal modes of near-extremal black holes in generalized spherically symmetric spacetime and strong cosmic censorship conjecture

A number of near-extremal conditions are utilized to simplify the equation of motion of the neutral scalar perturbations in generalized spherically symmetric black hole background into a differential equation with the Pöschl–Teller potential. An analytic formula for quasinormal frequencies is obtained. The analytic formula is then used to investigate strong cosmic censorship conjectures (SCC) of the generalized black hole spacetime for the smooth initial data. The Christodoulou version of the SCC is found to be violated for certain regions of the black hole parameter space including the black holes in general relativity while the C^{1} version of the SCC is always valid.

Strong cosmic censorship conjecture with NUT charge and conformal coupling

Strong cosmic censorship conjecture is central to the deterministic nature of general relativity, since it asserts that given any generic initial data on a spacelike hypersurface, the future can be uniquely predicted. However, recently it has been found that for charged black holes in asymptotically de Sitter spacetimes, the metric and massless scalar fields can be extended beyond the Cauchy horizon. This spells doom on the strong cosmic censorship conjecture, which prohibits precisely this scenario. In this work we try to understand the genericness of the above situation by studying the effect of NUT charge and conformally coupled scalar field on the violation of strong cosmic censorship conjecture for charged asymptotically de Sitter black holes. We have shown that even in the presence of the NUT charge and a conformally coupled scalar field strong cosmic censorship conjecture in indeed violated for such black holes with Cauchy horizon. Moreover, the presence of conformal coupling makes the situation even worse, in the sense that the scalar field is extendible across the Cauchy horizon as a C 1 function. On the other hand, the strong cosmic censorship conjecture is respected for conformally coupled scalar field in rotating black hole spacetimes with NUT charge. This reinforces the belief that possibly for astrophysical black holes, strong cosmic censorship conjecture is respected, irrespective of the nature of the scalar field.

Mass inflation and strong cosmic censorship in a nonextreme BTZ black hole

We study the phenomena of mass inflation using the Ori model for a rotating BTZ black hole that is sufficiently far from extremality, and show that the right Cauchy horizon ($\mathcal{CH}^+_R$) of the BTZ black hole becomes singular. Motivated by the recent analysis of Dias, Reall, Santos [J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2019) 097], we choose the retrograde quasinormal modes to govern the decay of perturbations exterior to the black hole. The resulting model captures the violation of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture near extremality. On the other hand, far from extremality, the $\mathcal{CH}^+_R$ of a BTZ black hole develops a weak null singularity. Our analysis shows a slowly rotating BTZ black hole will respect strong cosmic censorship.

Charged black holes in Einsteinian cubic gravity and nonuniqueness

Black holes are the simplest objects in the universe. They correspond to extreme deformations of spacetime geometry, and can exist even devoid of matter. In general relativity, (electro)vacuum black holes are uniquely determined by their mass, charge and angular momentum. This feature follows from a uniqueness theorem, which can be evaded if one considers higher dimensions or matter fields coupled to gravity. Here we find that Einsteinian cubic gravity, a well-motivated modification of Einstein gravity that includes third-order curvature corrections in accordance with low-energy effective theory expectations, admits black hole solutions with charge greater than mass, when minimally coupled to a Maxwell field. Moreover, we find that, in this regime, there can be two asymptotically flat black holes with the same charge and mass, posing the first example of vacuum black hole nonuniqueness in four dimensions that is free from pathologies. Examination of these black hole's thermodynamics reveals that when two branches coexist only the larger black hole is thermodynamically stable, while the smaller branch has negative specific heat. Einsteinian cubic gravity unveils two further surprising features. The charged black holes do not possess an inner horizon, in contrast with the usual Reissner-Nordstr\"om spacetime, thus avoiding the need to resort to strong cosmic censorship to uphold determinism. In addition to black holes, there exists a one-parameter family of naked singularity spacetimes sharing the same mass and charge as the former, but not continuously connected with them. These naked singularities exist in the under-extremal regime, being present even in pure (uncharged) Einsteinian cubic gravity.

A proof of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture

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 nonasymptotically flat black hole spacetimes has been the focus of intense research efforts in recent years. In this paper, 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.

Strong cosmic censorship in the BTZ black hole

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 instability of the inner horizon of the BTZ black hole to that of Kerr-type black holes.

Holographic probes of inner horizons

We study the inner horizons of rotating and charged black holes in anti-de Sitter space. These black holes have a classical analytic extension through the inner horizon to additional asymptotic regions. If this extension survives in the quantum theory, it requires particular analytic properties in a dual CFT, which give a prescription for calculating correlation functions for operators placed on any asymptotic boundary of the maximally extended spacetime. We show that for charged black holes in three or greater dimensions, and rotating black holes in four or greater dimensions, these analytic properties are in- consistent in the dual CFT, implying the absence of an analytic extension for quantum fields past the inner horizon. Thus, we find that strong cosmic censorship holds for all AdS black holes except rotating BTZ. To further study the latter case, we insert classical perturbations near the boundary at late times, producing shockwaves traveling along the inner horizon. We holographically compute CFT correlators in this background that probe a high energy scattering process near the inner horizon and argue that the shockwave does not destabilize the inner horizon violently enough to prevent signaling between different asymptotic regions of the Penrose diagram. This provides evidence that the rotating BTZ black hole does violate the strong cosmic censorship conjecture.

Aspects of C^0 causal theory

This paper serves as an introduction to C^0 causal theory. We focus on those parts of the theory which have proven useful for establishing spacetime inextendibility results in low regularity—a question which is motivated by the strong cosmic censorship conjecture in general relativity. This paper is self-contained; prior knowledge of causal theory is not assumed.

The rotating black hole interior: Insights from gravitational collapse in AdS3 spacetime

We present results from a numerical study of rotating black hole formation in 3-dimensional asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime, focusing on the structure of the black hole interior. While black holes in $AdS_3$ are of theoretical interest for a wide variety of reasons, we choose to study this system primarily as a toy model for astrophysical (4-dimensional) black holes formed from gravitational collapse. We investigate the effect of angular momentum on the geometry inside the event horizon, and see qualitative changes in the interior structure as a function of the spin parameter. For low spins, we find that a central spacelike curvature singularity forms, connecting to a singular, null Cauchy horizon. For spins above a threshold consistent with the linear analysis of Dias, Reall and Santos, curvature on the Cauchy horizon remains bounded, signaling a violation of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture. Further increasing the spin leads to a decrease in the relative size of the spacelike branch of the singularity, which vanishes completely above a second threshold. In these high-spin cases, the interior evolution is bounded by a regular Cauchy horizon, which extends all the way inward to a regular, timelike origin. We further explore the geodesic focusing ("gravitational shock-wave") effect predicted to occur along the outgoing branch of the inner horizon, first described by Marolf and Ori. Remarkably, we observe the effect at late times in all of the black holes we form, even those in which the inner apparent horizon collapses to zero radius early in their evolution.

Quantum instability of the Cauchy horizon in Reissner–Nordström–deSitter spacetime

In classical general relativity, the values of fields on spacetime are uniquely determined by their values at an initial time within the domain of dependence of this initial data surface. However, it may occur that the spacetime under consideration extends beyond this domain of dependence, and fields, therefore, are not entirely determined by their initial data. This occurs, for example, in the well-known (maximally) extended Reissner–Nordström or Reissner–Nordström–deSitter (RNdS) spacetimes. The boundary of the region determined by the initial data is called the ‘Cauchy horizon.’ It is located inside the black hole in these spacetimes. The strong cosmic censorship conjecture asserts that the Cauchy horizon does not, in fact, exist in practice because the slightest perturbation (of the metric itself or the matter fields) will become singular there in a sufficiently catastrophic way that solutions cannot be extended beyond the Cauchy horizon. Thus, if strong cosmic censorship holds, the Cauchy horizon will be converted into a ‘final singularity,’ and determinism will hold. Recently, however, it has been found that, classically this is not the case in RNdS spacetimes in a certain range of mass, charge, and cosmological constant. In this paper, we consider a quantum scalar field in RNdS spacetime and show that quantum theory comes to the rescue of strong cosmic censorship. We find that for any state that is nonsingular (i.e., Hadamard) within the domain of dependence, the expected stress-tensor blows up with affine parameter, V, along a radial null geodesic transverse to the Cauchy horizon as T VV ∼ C/V 2 with C independent of the state and C ≠ 0 generically in RNdS spacetimes. This divergence is stronger than in the classical theory and should be sufficient to convert the Cauchy horizon into a singularity through which the spacetime cannot be extended as a (weak) solution of the semiclassical Einstein equation. This behavior is expected to be quite general, although it is possible to have C = 0 in certain special cases, such as the BTZ black hole.

On the validity of strong cosmic censorship conjecture in presence of Dirac fields

An well posed theory of nature is expected to determine the future of an observer uniquely from a given set of appropriate initial data. In the context of general relativity, this is ensured by Penrose’s strong cosmic censorship conjecture. But in recent years, several examples are found which suggest breakdown of the deterministic nature of the theory in Reissner–Nordström–de Sitter black holes under the influence of different fundamental fields. Nevertheless, the situation has been reassuring for the case of astrophysically meaningful Kerr–de Sitter black hole solutions which seems to respect the conjecture. However, the previous analyses were done considering only the effect of scalar fields. In this paper, we extend the study by considering Dirac fields in Kerr–de Sitter background and show that there exist a parameter space which does not respect the conjecture.

Strong cosmic censorship conjecture in higher curvature gravity

Deterministic nature of general relativity is ensured by the strong cosmic censorship conjecture, which asserts that spacetime cannot be extended beyond Cauchy horizon with square integrable connection. Although this conjecture holds true for asymptotically flat black hole spacetimes in general relativity, a potential violation of this conjecture occurs in charged asymptotically de Sitter spacetimes. Since it is expected that Einstein-Hilbert action will involve higher curvature corrections, in this article we have studied whether one can restore faith in the strong cosmic censorship when higher curvature corrections to general relativity are considered. Contrary to our expectations, we have explicitly demonstrated that not only a violation to the conjecture occurs near extremality, but the violation appears to become stronger as the strength of the higher curvature term increases.

Strong cosmic censorship for a scalar field in a logarithmic-de Sitter black hole

It has been shown that the quasinormal modes of perturebated fields can be used to investigate the validity of strong cosmic censorship (SCC). Relevant issues for Reissner–Nordstrom–de Sitter (RN-dS) black holes and Born–Infeld–de Sitter black holes have been discussed. In this paper, we investigate SCC in an asymptotic RN-dS black hole with logarithmic nonlinear electromagnetic field perturbed by massless scalar fields. It has been argued that SCC can be violated in a near-extremal RN-dS black hole. However, we find that the NLED effect can rescue SCC for a near-extremal logarithmic-de Sitter black hole. Compared with Born-Infeld model, we find that the NLED effect has similar behavior.

The Strong Cosmic Censorship Conjecture May Be Violated

Penrose's intense cosmic censorship conjecture asserts that the Cauchy horizon inside the dynamically formed black hole is unstable to the remaining material field that falls into the black hole. The physical importance of this conjecture stems from the fact that it provides the necessary conditions for general relativity to become truly deterministic gravity. In a recent paper by Hod, it provides a proof based on Beckenstein 's second law of generalized thermodynamics that confi rms the validity of the interesting Penrose conjecture in the space-time of curved black holes. Recently, an article of mine obtained interesting results about the super radiant stability of Kerr black holes. The result contains some conclusions that violate the no-hair theorem. We know that the phenomenon of black hole super radiation is a process of entropy reduction, and connecting Hod's paper with my paper, I found that the strong cosmic censorship conjecture may be violated.

Strong cosmic censorship for a scalar field in a Born-Infeld–de Sitter black hole

It has been shown that the Strong Cosmic Censorship (SCC) can be violated by a scalar field in a near-extremal Reissner-Nordstrom-de Sitter black hole. In this paper, we investigate the Strong Cosmic Censorship in a Born-Infeld-de Sitter black hole by a scalar perturbation field with/without a charge. When the Born-Infeld parameter b becomes small, the nonlinear electrodynamics effect starts to play an important role and tends to rescue SCC. Specifically, we find that the SCC violation region decreases in size with decreasing b. Moreover, for a sufficiently small b, SCC can always be restored in a near-extremal Born-Infeld-de Sitter black hole with a fixed charge ratio.

Charged particle and strong cosmic censorship in Reissner–Nordström–de Sitter black holes

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--Nordstr\"{o}m--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 circular orbits in near Nariai-type extremal conditions. According to this relationship, the strong cosmic censorship conjecture is valid.

The BTZ black hole violates strong cosmic censorship

We investigate the stability of the inner horizon of a rotating BTZ black hole. We show that linear perturbations arising from smooth initial data are arbitrarily differentiable at the inner horizon if the black hole is sufficiently close to extremality. This is demonstrated for scalar fields, for massive Chern-Simons fields, for Proca fields, and for massive spin-2 fields. Thus the strong cosmic censorship conjecture is violated by a near-extremal BTZ black hole in a large class of theories. However, we show that a weaker \\rough" version of the conjecture is respected. We calculate the renormalized energymomentum tensor of a scalar field in the Hartle-Hawking state in the BTZ geometry. We show that the result is finite at the inner horizon of a near-extremal black hole. Hence the backreaction of vacuum polarization does not enforce strong cosmic censorship.