On black hole formation in higher dimensions

Abstract

The two main processes of black hole formation are: one, collapse of a matter cloud under its own gravity and the other is accretion of matter onto an already existing gravitating centre. The necessary condition for both the processes to operate is that overall force on collapsing fluid element or on test accreting particles is attractive. It turns out that this is not the case in general in higher dimensions greater than the usual four for collapsing or accreting matter having non-zero angular momentum. Thus both these processes cannot operate in higher dimensions to form a rotating black hole. The only theory in which this is not the case in higher dimensions is the pure Lovelock gravity where both these processes could in principle work for formation of black holes.

10 pages, one figure; Accepted for publication in IJMPD. Updated to match the accepted version