Generic Cosmic Censorship Violation in anti de Sitter Space

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in four-dimensional anti de Sitter space, certain scalar field theories can evolve from smooth initial data to naked singularities, challenging the cosmic censorship conjecture.

Contribution

It shows that for a broad class of scalar potentials, cosmic censorship can be violated in asymptotically anti de Sitter spacetimes, providing explicit examples.

Findings

Existence of initial data evolving to naked singularities in AdS.

Cosmic censorship violation for certain scalar potentials.

Potential implications for flat spacetime scenarios.

Abstract

We consider (four dimensional) gravity coupled to a scalar field with potential V(\phi). 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 cosmic censorship in asymptotically flat spacetimes, but we do not have definite results.