Return of the quantum cosmic censor

Abstract

The influential theorems of Hawking and Penrose demonstrate that spacetime singularities are ubiquitous features of general relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity. The utility of classical general relativity in describing gravitational phenomena is maintained by the cosmic censorship principle. This conjecture, whose validity is still one of the most important open questions in general relativity, asserts that the undesirable spacetime singularities are always hidden inside of black holes. In this Letter we reanalyze extreme situations which have been considered as counterexamples to the cosmic censorship hypothesis. In particular, we consider the absorption of fermion particles by a spinning black hole. Ignoring quantum effects may lead one to conclude that an incident fermion wave may over spin the black hole, thereby exposing its inner singularity to distant observers. However, we show that when quantum effects are properly taken into account, the integrity of the black-hole event horizon is irrefutable. This observation suggests that the cosmic censorship principle is intrinsically a quantum phenomena.

5 pages

References in corpus (9)

• Overcharging a Black Hole and Cosmic Censorship
• Weak Cosmic Censorship: As Strong as Ever
• Overspinning a nearly extreme charged black hole via a quantum tunneling process
• Cosmic Censorship: As Strong As Ever
• Cosmic Censorship, Area Theorem, and Self-Energy of Particles
• Energy conservation for point particles undergoing radiation reaction
• Stability of the Black Hole Horizon and the Landau Ghost
• Cosmic Censorship: The Role of Quantum Gravity
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• Challenging the weak cosmic censorship conjecture with charged quantum particles
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• Can quantum mechanics fool the cosmic censor?
• Weak Cosmic Censorship, Superradiance and Quantum Particle Creation
• Spacetime Singularities and Cosmic Censorship Conjecture: A Review with Some Thoughts
• Electromagnetic field and cosmic censorship
• Weak cosmic censorship, dyonic Kerr-Newman black holes and Dirac fields
• Cosmic Censorship: Formation of a Shielding Horizon Around a Fragile Horizon
• Testing Cosmic Censorship Conjecture for Extremal and Near-extremal (2+1)-dimensional MTZ Black Holes
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• Overspinning Kerr-MOG black holes by test fields and the third law of black hole dynamics
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• Universal charge-mass relation: From black holes to atomic nuclei
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• The variational method, backreactions, and the absorption probability in Wald type problems
• Dispersive censor of acoustic spacetimes with a shock-wave singularity
• Challenging event horizons with spin (3/2) fields
• Spin-2 fields and cosmic censorship
• Can the induced increase in the angular velocity prevent the overspinning of BTZ black holes?
• Particle absorption by black holes and the generalized second law of thermodynamics
• Second order variations and the overspinning problem in Kerr-Taub-NUT spacetime
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