Fragmentation of general relativistic quasi-toroidal polytropes

Abstract

We investigate the role of rotational instabilities in the context of black hole formation in relativistic stars. In addition to the standard scenario - an axially symmetric dynamical instability forming a horizon at the star's center - the recently found low-$T/|W|$ instabilities are shown to lead to fragmentation and off-center horizon formation in differentially rotating stars. This process might be an alternative pathway to produce SMBHs from supermassive stars with inefficient angular momentum transport.

2 pages, 1 figure. Submitted to the Proceedings of the 11th Marcel Grossmann Meeting (MG11) in Berlin, Germany, July 23-29, 2006