Title: Testing Cosmic Censorship in Kerr-Like Collapse Situations
Abstract: According to the cosmic censorship hypothesis of Penrose, naked singularities should never occur in realistic collapse situations. One of the major open problems in this context is the existence of a naked singularity in the Kerr solution with |a|>m; this singularity can be interpreted as the final product of collapse of a rapidly rotating object. Assuming that certain very general and physically reasonable conditions hold, we show here, using the global techniques, that a realistic gravitational collapse of any rotating object, which develops from a regular initial state, cannot lead to the formation of a final state resembling the Kerr solution with a naked singularity. This result supports the validity of the cosmic censorship hypothesis.