Cosmic Censorship in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory

Penrose's cosmic censorship conjecture states that in four spacetime dimensions naked singularities (i.e. curvature singularities not covered by an event horizon) cannot form from typical regular initial data (see this paper by Wald for an overview). In the paper "Challenging the cosmic censorship in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory with numerically simulated gedankenexperiments" by Corelli, Ikeda, Pani (2021) we tried to challenge this conjecture by performing extensive nonlinear numerical simulations of the spherical collapse of (charged) wavepackets onto a charged black hole within Einstein-Maxwell theory and in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory featuring nonminimal couplings and a spontaneous scalarization mechanism. We found that no naked singularities form, in agreement with the cosmic censorship conjecture, and unveiled several interesting effects, including superradiantly-induced descalarization.

In this page we collect some extra supplemental material, including some animations from the simulations performed by Fabrizio Corelli.

  • descalarization.ogv: Dynamical descalarization of a scalarized BH in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory due to absorption of an opposite-charged wavepacket
  • superradiance.ogv: Nonlinear superradiant scattering of a charged wavepacket onto a scalarized BH in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory
  • superradiance_descalarization.ogv: Superradiantly-induced descalarization of a charged wavepacket onto a scalarized BH in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory

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