Numerical Study of Cosmic Censorship in String Theory

TL;DR

This paper numerically investigates the potential violation of cosmic censorship in string theory within anti-de Sitter spacetime, finding that black holes form instead of naked singularities, thus supporting cosmic censorship.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical analysis showing that cosmic censorship holds in scenarios previously thought to violate it in string theory.

Findings

Black holes form instead of naked singularities in studied cases

Numerical evidence supports cosmic censorship in these string theory models

Initial data variations do not lead to censorship violation

Abstract

Recently Hertog, Horowitz, and Maeda have argued that cosmic censorship can be generically violated in string theory in anti-de Sitter spacetime by considering a collapsing bubble of a scalar field whose mass saturates the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. We study this system numerically and find that for various choices of initial data black holes form rather than naked singularities, implying that in these cases cosmic censorship is upheld.