Phys. Rev. D 58, 084013 (1998) [8 pages]

Singularity in supercritical collapse of a spherical scalar field

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Lior M. Burko
Department of Physics, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, 32000 Haifa, Israel

Received 17 March 1998; published 2 September 1998

We study the singularity created in the supercritical collapse of a spherical massless scalar field. We first model the geometry and the scalar field to be homogeneous, and find a generic solution (in terms of a formal series expansion) describing a monotonic, scalar curvature, strong spacelike singularity. We confront the predictions of this analytical model with the pointwise behavior of fully nonlinear and inhomogeneous numerical simulations, and find full compliance. We also study the phenomenology of the spatial structure of the singularity numerically. At asymptotically late advanced time the singularity approaches the Schwarzschild singularity, in addition to discrete points at finite advanced times, where the singularity is Schwarzschild-like. At other points the singularity is different from a Schwarzschild singularity due to the nonlinear scalar field.


©1998 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.58.084013
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.58.084013
PACS: 04.70.Bw, 04.20.Dw

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