Strong cosmic censorship for solutions of the Einstein-Maxwell field equations with polarized Gowdy symmetry

TL;DR

This paper proves strong cosmic censorship for polarized Gowdy symmetric solutions of the Einstein-Maxwell equations by relating them to vacuum Gowdy spacetimes and applying existing vacuum results.

Contribution

It establishes strong cosmic censorship for a new class of Einstein-Maxwell solutions by transforming the problem into a known vacuum case and leveraging existing theorems.

Findings

Strong cosmic censorship holds for polarized Gowdy Einstein-Maxwell solutions.

The equations can be reformulated to match vacuum Gowdy spacetime equations.

Vacuum results imply censorship in the Einstein-Maxwell case.

Abstract

A proof of strong cosmic censorship is presented for a class of solutions of the Einstein-Maxwell equations, those with polarized Gowdy symmetry. A key element of the argument is the observation that by means of a suitable choice of variables the central equations in this problem can be written in a form where they are identical to the central equations for general (i.e. non-polarized) vacuum Gowdy spacetimes. Using this it is seen that the deep results of Ringstr\"om on strong cosmic censorship in the vacuum case have implications for the Einstein-Maxwell case. Working out the geometrical meaning of these analytical results leads to the main conclusion.