Strong cosmic censorship in the BTZ black hole

Abstract Recently it has been shown that quantum fields can be regular on the inner, Cauchy horizon of a rotating BTZ black hole, which appears to indicate a failure of strong cosmic censorship. We argue that, instead, what these results imply is that the inner horizon remains non-singular when leading-order backreaction of the quantum fields is computed, but, after next-order backreaction is accounted for, it will become singular. Then, strong cosmic censorship will be enforced in the BTZ black hole. We support our claims using a four-dimensional holographic dual of the system, which connects the instability of the inner horizon of the BTZ black hole to that of Kerr-type black holes.