Stability and Instability of the Cauchy Horizon for the Spherically Symmetric Einstein-Maxwell-Scalar Field Equations

This paper considers a trapped characteristic initial value problem for the spherically symmetric Einstein-Maxwell-scalar field equations. For an open set of initial data whose closure contains in particular Reissner-Nordström data, the future boundary of the maximal domain of development is found to be a light-like surface along which the curvature blows up, and yet the metric can be continuously extended beyond it. This result is related to the strong cosmic censorship conjecture of Roger Penrose.