It is shown analytically that the Dirac equation has no normalizable, time-periodic solutions in a ReissnerNordstrm black hole background; in particular, there are no static solutions of the Dirac equation in such a background metric. The physical interpretation is that Dirac particles can either disappear into the black hole or escape to infinity, but they cannot stay on a periodic orbit around the black hole.

We consider the Cauchy problem for the massive Dirac equation in the non-extreme Kerr-Newman geometry outside the event horizon. We derive an integral representation for the Dirac propagator involving the solutions of the ODEs which arise in Chandrasekhar's separation of variables. It is proved that for initial data in L infinity loc near the event horizon with L 2 decay at infinity, the probability of the Dirac particle to be in any compact region of space tends to zero as t goes to infinity. This means that the Dirac particle must either disappear in the black hole or escape to infinity.

We prove the following stronger version of the positivity of quasi-local energy (mass) stated by Liu and Yau: the quasi-local energy of each connected component of the boundary of a compact spacelike hypersurface which satisfies the local energy condition is strictly positive unless the spacetime is flat along the spacelike hypersurface and the boundary of the spacelike hypersurface is connected.