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Violation of the Third Law of Black Hole Mechanics in Vacuum Gravity

Crump JRV, Gadioux M, Reall HS, Santos JE

Physical review letters, 2026

6 citations

Abstract

We demonstrate numerically the existence of solutions of five-dimensional vacuum gravity describing the formation, in finite time, of an extremal rotating black hole from a preexisting Schwarzschild black hole. This is the first example of a violation of the third law of black hole mechanics in vacuum gravity and demonstrates that the third law is false independently of any matter model. We also demonstrate the existence of solutions describing the formation, in finite time, of an extremal rotating black hole from vacuum initial data that do not contain a black hole.

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