Evidence for an Electrifying Violation of Cosmic Censorship

TL;DR

This paper provides a potential counterexample to cosmic censorship in a four-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory with anti-de Sitter boundary conditions, showing that smooth initial data can evolve into regions of infinite curvature visible to distant observers.

Contribution

It introduces a plausible counterexample to cosmic censorship in Einstein-Maxwell theory with AdS boundary conditions, extending previous zero-temperature results to nonzero temperatures.

Findings

Initial data evolves to arbitrarily large curvature regions.

Counterexample persists at nonzero temperatures.

Supports the possibility of cosmic censorship violation.

Abstract

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.