On the Penrose inequality for charged black holes

Bray and Khuri (2011 Asian J. Math. 15 557-610; 2010 Discrete Continuous Dyn. Syst. A 27 741766) outlined an approach to prove the Penrose inequality for general initial data sets of the Einstein equations. In this paper we extend this approach so that it may be applied to a charged version of the Penrose inequality. Moreover, assuming that the initial data are time-symmetric, we prove the rigidity statement in the case of equality for the charged Penrose inequality, a result which seems to be absent from the literature. A new quasi-local mass, tailored to charged initial data sets is also introduced, and used in the proof.