Critical phenomena in the gravitational collapse of electromagnetic waves

Abstract

We numerically investigate the threshold of black-hole formation in the gravitational collapse of electromagnetic waves in axisymmetry. We find approximate power-law scaling ${\rho }_{\max }\sim ({\eta }_{\ast }-\eta {)}^{-2\gamma }$ of the maximum density in the time evolution of near-subcritical data with $\gamma \simeq 0.145$, where $\eta$ is the amplitude of the initial data. We directly observe approximate discrete self-similarity in near-critical time evolutions with a log-scale echoing period of $\Delta \simeq 0.55$. The critical solution is approximately the same for two families of initial data, providing some evidence of universality. Neither the discrete self-similarity nor the universality, however, are exact. We speculate that the absence of an exactly discrete self-similarity might be caused by the interplay of electromagnetic and gravitational wave degrees of freedom, or by the presence of higher-order angular multipoles, or both, and discuss implications of our findings for the critical collapse of vacuum gravitational waves.

5 pages, 3 figures; version accepted for publication in PRL

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• Pseudospectral implementation of the Einstein-Maxwell system
• Comparison of linear Brill and Teukolsky waves