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Abstract We study the interior of black holes in the presence of charged scalar hair of small amplitude$$\epsilon $$ $ϵ$on the event horizon and show their terminal boundary is a crushing Kasner-like singularity. These spacetimes are spherically symmetric, spatially homogeneous and they differ significantly from the hairy black holes with uncharged matter previously studied in[M. Van de Moortel, Violent nonlinear collapse inside charged hairy black holes, Arch. Rational. Mech. Anal., 248, 89, 2024]in that the electric field is dynamical and subject to the backreaction of charged matter. We prove this charged backreaction causes drastically different dynamics compared to the uncharged case that ultimately impact the formation of the spacelike singularity, exhibiting novel phenomena such asCollapsed oscillations: oscillatory growth of the scalar hair, nonlinearly induced by the collapseAfluctuating collapse: The final Kasner exponents’ dependency in$$\epsilon $$ $ϵ$is via an expression of the form$$|\sin \left( \omega _0 \cdot \epsilon ^{-2}+ O(\log (\epsilon ^{-1}))\right) |$$ $|sin\left({\omega }_0,·,{ϵ}^{-2},+,O,(log\left({ϵ}^{-1}\right))\right)|$.AKasner bounce: a transition from an unstable Kasner metric to a different stable Kasner metricThe Kasner bounce occurring in our spacetime is reminiscent of the celebrated BKL scenario in cosmology. We additionally propose a construction indicating the relevance of the above phenomena – including Kasner bounces – to spacelike singularities inside more general (asymptotically flat) black holes, beyond the hairy case. While our result applies to all values of$$\Lambda \in \mathbb {R}$$ $\Lambda \in R$, in the$$\Lambda <0$$ $\Lambda <0$case, our spacetime corresponds to the interior region of a charged asymptotically Anti-de-Sitter stationary black hole, also known as aholographic superconductorin high-energy physics, and whose exterior region was rigorously constructed in the recent mathematical work [W. Zheng,Asymptotically Anti-de Sitter Spherically Symmetric Hairy Black Holes, arXiv.2410.04758]. 

In the wake of major breakthroughs in General Relativity during the 1960s, Roger Penrose introduced Strong Cosmic Censorship, a profound conjecture regarding the deterministic nature of the theory. Penrose’s proposal has since opened far-reaching new mathematical avenues, revealing connections to fundamental questions about black holes and the nature of gravitational singularities. We review recent advances arising from modern techniques in the theory of partial differential equations as applied to Strong Cosmic Censorship, maintaining a focus on the context of gravitational collapse that gave birth to the conjecture. 

Abstract We construct a new one-parameter family, indexed by$$\epsilon $$ $ϵ$, of two-ended, spatially-homogeneous black hole interiors solving the Einstein–Maxwell–Klein–Gordon equations with a (possibly zero) cosmological constant$$\Lambda $$ $\Lambda$and bifurcating off a Reissner–Nordström-(dS/AdS) interior ($$\epsilon =0$$ $ϵ=0$). For all small$$\epsilon \ne 0$$ $ϵ\ne 0$, we prove that, although the black hole is charged, its terminal boundary is an everywhere-spacelikeKasner singularity foliated by spheres of zero radiusr. Moreover, smaller perturbations (i.e. smaller$$|\epsilon |$$ $\left|ϵ\right|$) aremore singular than larger ones, in the sense that the Hawking mass and the curvature blow up following a power law of the form$$r^{-O(\epsilon ^{-2})}$$ $r^{-O\left({ϵ}^{-2}\right)}$at the singularity$$\{r=0\}$$ $\{r=0\}$. This unusual property originates from a dynamical phenomenon—violent nonlinear collapse—caused by the almost formation of a Cauchy horizon to the past of the spacelike singularity$$\{r=0\}$$ $\{r=0\}$. This phenomenon was previously described numerically in the physics literature and referred to as “the collapse of the Einstein–Rosen bridge”. While we cover all values of$$\Lambda \in \mathbb {R}$$ $\Lambda \in R$, the case$$\Lambda <0$$ $\Lambda <0$is of particular significance to the AdS/CFT correspondence. Our result can also be viewed in general as a first step towards the understanding of the interior of hairy black holes. 

Motivated by the strong cosmic censorship conjecture in the presence of matter, we study the Einstein equations coupled with a charged/massive scalar field with spherically symmetric characteristic data relaxing to a Reissner–Nordström event horizon. Contrary to the vacuum case, the relaxation rate is conjectured to be slow (nonintegrable), opening the possibility that the matter fields and the metric coefficients blow up in amplitude at the Cauchy horizon, not just in energy. We show that whether this blow-up in amplitude occurs or not depends on a novel oscillation condition on the event horizon which determines whether or not a resonance is excited dynamically. If the oscillation condition is satisfied, then the resonance is not excited and we show boundedness and continuous extendibility of the matter fields and the metric across the Cauchy horizon. If the oscillation condition is violated, then by the combined effect of slow decay and the resonance being excited, we show that the massive uncharged scalar field blows up in amplitude. In a companion paper, we will show that in that case a novel null contraction singularity forms at the Cauchy horizon, across which the metric is not continuously extendible in the usual sense. Heuristic arguments in the physics literature indicate that the oscillation condition should be satisfied generically on the event horizon. If these heuristics are true, then our result falsifies the continuous-formulation of strong cosmic censorship by means of oscillation. 

It is widely expected that generic black holes have a nonempty but weakly singular Cauchy horizon, due to mass inflation. Indeed this has been proven by the author in the spherical collapse of a charged scalar field, under decay assumptions of the field in the black exterior which are conjectured to be generic. A natural question then arises: can this weakly singular Cauchy horizon close off the space-time, or does the weak null singularity necessarily “break down,” giving way to a different type of singularity? The main result of this paper is to prove that the Cauchy horizon cannot ever “close off” the space-time. As a consequence, the weak null singularity breaks down and transitions to a stronger singularity for which the area-radius r extends to 0.