Critical phenomena in gravitational collapse (review paper)

Abstract

As first discovered by Choptuik, the black hole threshold in the space of initial data for general relativity shows both surprising structure and surprising simplicity. Universality, power-law scaling of the black hole mass, and scale echoing have given rise to the term "critical phenomena". They are explained by the existence of exact solutions which are attractors within the black hole threshold, that is, attractors of codimension one in phase space, and which are typically self-similar. This review gives an introduction to the phenomena, tries to summarize the essential features of what is happening, and then presents extensions and applications of this basic scenario. Critical phenomena are of interest particularly for creating surprising structure from simple equations, and for the light they throw on cosmic censorship. They may have applications in quantum black holes and astrophysics.

46 p. Latex. Many minor corrections and extensions. To appear in Adv. Theor. Math. Phys

References in corpus (3)

• Near-Critical Gravitational Collapse and the Initial Mass Function of Primordial Black Holes
• Critical Collapse of Skyrmions
• Perturbations and Critical Behavior in the Self-Similar Gravitational Collapse of a Massless Scalar Field

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Power laws, scale invariance, and generalized Frobenius series: Applications to Newtonian and TOV stars near criticality
• Exploring an S-matrix for gravitational collapse II: a momentum space analysis
• Ramifications of Lineland
• Deep inelastic vortex scattering: A third outcome for head-on collisions
• Power-laws from critical gravitational collapse: The mass distribution of subsolar objects
• Universality of the subsolar mass distribution from critical gravitational collapse
• Global versus Local Aspects of Critical Collapse