Critical Phenomena in the Collapse of Gravitational Waves

Article

Critical Phenomena in the Collapse of Gravitational Waves

Baumgarte T. W.; Brügmann B.; Cors D.; Gundlach C.; Hilditch D.; Khirnov A.; Ledvinka T.; Renkhoff S.; Suárez Fernández I.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 131 (2023)

doi ↗

Abstract

Fine-tuning generic but smooth spherically symmetric initial data for general relativity to the threshold of dynamical black hole formation creates arbitrarily large curvatures, mediated by a universal self-similar solution that acts as an intermediate attractor. For vacuum gravitational waves, however, these critical phenomena have been elusive.We present, for the first time, excellent agreement among three independent numerical simulations of this collapse. Surprisingly, we find no universality, and observe approximate selfsimilarity for some families of initial data but not for others.

Institute authors

Ledvinka, Tomáš

Supported by

GACR 21-11268S — Mass and charge currents in general relativity and astrophysics

BibTeX

@article{UTF911,
  author        = {Baumgarte T. W. and Brügmann B. and Cors D. and Gundlach C. and Hilditch D. and Khirnov A. and Ledvinka T. and Renkhoff S. and Suárez Fernández I.},
  title         = {{Critical Phenomena in the Collapse of Gravitational Waves}},
  journal       = {Phys. Rev. Lett.},
  volume        = {131},
  year          = {2023},
  month         = {10},
  doi           = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.181401},
}