The Hawking–Penrose singularity theorem weakens the causality assumption of global hyperbolicity used in the Penrose singularity theorem, at the expense of invoking the stronger timelike (instead of null) convergence condition (TCC). We analyze the TCC for a large class of dynamical spherically symmetric spacetimes and show that it decomposes into three independent conditions on the Misner-Sharp mass function. For stationary black holes, only two of these are nontrivial. One of these conditions is already implied by the null convergence condition (NCC), whereas the other one depends explicitly on the TCC and constrains the sign of the second derivative of the mass function. We show that generic asymptotically flat regular black holes with a smooth de Sitter core locally violate this new TCC-induced condition near the core, even if they globally satisfy the other condition imposed by the NCC. Therefore, it is the violation of the TCC which ensures that regular de Sitter core black holes circumvent the Hawking-Penrose theorem. By contrast, we show that asymptotically flat regular black holes with an anti–de Sitter core locally satisfy the new TCC-induced condition near the core, but necessarily violate it at some finite distance away from it. As concrete examples for both types of spacetimes, we consider TCC violations in the Bardeen black-hole spacetime with a de Sitter core, and in a modified Bardeen black-hole spacetime with an anti–de Sitter core.

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• Alternative gravity theories
• General relativity