| Abstract: |
| Extremal black holes are special solutions of Einstein’s equations with absolute zero temperature in the celebrated thermodynamic analogy of black hole mechanics. Bardeen, Carter, and Hawking conjectured in 1973 that extremal black holes cannot form dynamically in gravitational collapse, namely, that it should not be possible to reduce the temperature of a black hole to zero in finite time. In this talk, I will explain how recent developments in the mathematical theory of general relativity have led to the disproof of this “third law of black hole thermodynamics” and have furthermore revealed that extremal black holes play a key role in the phase transition from dispersion to black hole formation in the moduli space of solutions to the Einstein equations. This is based on joint work with Christoph Kehle (University of Zürich). |
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