Gravitational collapse: The story so far

An outstanding problem in gravitation theory and relativistic astrophysics today is to understand the final outcome of an endless gravitational collapse. Such a continual collapse would take place when stars more massive than few times the mass of the sun collapse under their own gravity on exhausting their nuclear fuel. According to the general theory of relativity, this results either in a black hole, or a naked singularity — which can communicate with far away observers in the universe. While black holes are (almost) being detected and are increasingly used to model high energy astrophysical phenomena, naked singularities have turned into a topic of active discussion, aimed at understanding their structure and implications. Recent developments here are reviewed, indicating future directions.     

Naked Singularities Formation in the Gravitational Collapse of Barotropic Spherical Fluids

The gravitational collapse of spherical, barotropic perfect fluids is analyzed here. For the first time, the final state of these systems is studied without resorting to simplifying assumptions - such as self-similarity - using a new approach based on non-linear o.d.e. techniques, and formation of naked singularities is shown to occur for solutions such that the mass function is analytic in a neighborhood of the spacetime singularity.     

The final state of gravitational collapse in Eddington‐inspired Born‐Infeld theory

In this paper, we address the implications when a homogeneous dust model is considered for a scenario of gravitational collapse in the context of Eddington‐inspired Born‐Infeld (EiBI) theory. In order to describe the dynamical evolution of the collapse, we present an effective equation, which constitutes the first order corrections, in EiBI coupling parameter κ, to Einstein's field equations. The geometry outside the collapsing object is derived by imposing the standard Darmois‐Israel junction conditions at the boundary surface of the dust. This induces an effective matter source in the outer region which gives rise to a non‐singular, non‐Schwarzschild geometry at the final state of the collapse. For this exterior geometry, we find the threshold of mass for the formation of the black hole. This provides a cut‐off over κ as .

     

Null Fluid Collapse in Rastall Theory of Gravity

A Vaidya spacetime is considered for gravitational collapse of a type II fluid in the context of the Rastall theory of gravity. For a linear equation of state for the fluid profiles, the conditions under which the dynamical evolution of the collapse can give rise to the formation of a naked singularity are examined. It is shown that depending on the model parameters, strong curvature, naked singularities would arise as exact solutions to the Rastall's field equations. The allowed values of these parameters satisfy certain conditions on the physical reliability, nakedness, and the curvature strength of the singularity. It turns out that Rastall gravity, in comparison to general relativity, provides a wider class of physically reasonable spacetimes that admit both locally and globally naked singularities.     

Gravitational Collapse without a Remnant

We investigate the gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric, inhomogeneous star, which is described by a perfect fluid with heat flow and satisfies the equation of state p=ρ/3 or p=C ρ ^γ at its center. Different from the ordinary process of gravitational collapsing, the energy of the whole star is emitted into space. And the remaining spacetime is a Minkowski one at the end of the process.     

Collapse of a charged radiating star with shear

The junction conditions for a magnetohydrodynamic fluid sphere undergoing dissipative gravitational collapse in the form of a radial heat flux with shear are obtained. These conditions extend particular results of earlier treatments. We demonstrate that the pressure is proportional to the magnitude of the heat flux as is the case in shear-free models. However in our case the gravitational potentials must be solutions of the Einstein-Maxwell system of equations. The mass function m(v) is increased by a factor related to the charge Q of the radiating star. Physical quantities relating to the local conservation of momentum and surface redshift are obtained.     

Letter: Self-Similar Collapse of Scalar Field with Plane Symmetry

Plane symmetric self-similar solutions to Einstein's four-dimensional theory of gravity are studied and all such solutions are given analytically in closed form. The local and global properties of these solutions are investigated and it is shown that some of the solutions can be interpreted as representing gravitational collapse of the scalar field. During the collapse, trapped surfaces are never developed. As a result, no black hole is formed. Although the collapse always ends with spacetime singularities, it is found that these singularities are spacelike and not naked.     

On the Tidally Induced Gravitational Collapse of a Particle Cluster

An important issue in the dynamics of neutron star binaries is whether tidal interaction can cause the individual stars to collapse into black holes during inspiral. To understand this issue better, we study the dynamics of a cluster of collisionless particles orbiting a non-rotating black hole, which is part of a widely separated circular binary. The companion body's electric- and magnetic-type tidal fields distort the black hole and perturb the cluster, eventually causing the cluster to collapse into the hole as the companion spirals in under the influence of gravitational radiation reaction. We find that magnetic-type tidal forces do not significantly influence the evolution of the cluster as a whole. However, individual orbits can be strongly affected by these forces. For example, some orbits are destabilized due to the addition of magnetic-type tidal forces. We find that the most stable orbits are close to the companion's orbital plane and retrograde with respect to the companion's orbit.     

Spherical Gravitational Collapse: Tangential Pressure and Related Equations of State

We derive an equation for the acceleration of a fluid element in the spherical gravitational collapse of a bounded compact object made up of an imperfect fluid. We show that non-singular as well as singular solutions arise in the collapse of a fluid initially at rest and having only a tangential pressure. We obtain an exact solution of the Einstein equations, in the form of an infinite series, for collapse under tangential pressure with a linear equation of state. We show that if a singularity forms in the tangential pressure model, the conditions for the singularity to be naked are exactly the same as in the model of dust collapse.     

Quasi-Spherical Gravitational Collapse in Any Dimension

We study the occurrence and nature of naked singularities for a dust model with non-zero cosmological constant in (n+2)-dimensional Szekeres space-times (which possess no Killing vectors) for n 2. We find that central shell-focusing singularities may be locally naked in higher dimensions but depend sensitively on the choice of initial data. In fact, the nature of the initial density determines the possibility of naked singularity in space-times with more than five dimensions. The results are similar to the collapse in spherically symmetric Tolman-Bondi-Lemaître space-times.     

Temperature Evolution During Radiative Gravitational Collapse

We investigate the evolution of the temperature profile of a Friedmann-like collapsing sphere undergoing dissipative gravitational collapse in the form of a radial heat flux. We further consider the behavior of the star close to quasi-static equilibrium (weak heat flux approximation) and show that relaxational effects cannot be ignored. It is explicitly shown that extended irreversible thermodynamics predict a higher temperature at all interior points of the stellar configuration compared to the Eckart theory. These results carry over to the weak heat flux approximation with the magnitude of the temperature being lower than the full radiating model. The stability of the model after its departure from equilibrium is studied by considering the behavior of the control parameter throughout the stellar interior.     

Gravitational Lensing by Charged Black Holes

We formulate the lensing effects of a spherically symmetric electrically charged black hole using thin lens equations. The charged black hole leads to three images and could lead to three Einstein rings provided the parameters such as the mass, charge and the distances satisfy certain constraints. We have computed the exact positions of images and magnification properties for a super-massive black hole with electric charge.     

Expanding the Area of Gravitational Entropy

I describe how gravitational entropy is intimately connected with the concept of gravitational heat, expressed as the difference between the total and free energies of a given gravitational system. From this perspective one can compute these thermodyanmic quantities in settings that go considerably beyond Bekenstein's original insight that the area of a black hole event horizon can be identified with thermodynamic entropy. The settings include the outsides of cosmological horizons and spacetimes with NUT charge. However the interpretation of gravitational entropy in these broader contexts remains to be understood.     

黑洞与奇点

黑洞可以说是引力最极端的体现,其视界内是个连光也逃不出去的时空区域。近来黑洞在天 文观测方面取得令人惊讶的发展,这其中包括：黑洞碰撞的引力波探测以及M87 星系的超大质量 黑洞的所谓第一张黑洞照片。但是在理论的层面上,黑洞物理尚有许多未解之谜。其中,信息遗失 的悖论是最有名的。但是,有另一个问题至少和信息的丢失一样{甚至更加{令人费解的,就是黑洞 内部的奇点性质。时空奇点是广义相对论本身无法描述的,在那里究竟发生什么事？黑洞内部的奇 点和宇宙大爆炸时的奇点有何不同？奇点是否会裸露在黑洞外面？所谓“宇宙监督猜想”的假设目 前有何进展？我们在这篇半科普的文章中简单的介绍这些课题,希望本文章对物理和数学的本科生 有所帮助。     

Hawking Radiation from Spherically Symmetrical Gravitational Collapse to an Extremal R-N Black Hole for a Charged Scalar Field

Si-Jie Gao has recently investigated Hawking radiation from spherically symmetrical gravitational collapse to an extremal R-N black hole for a real scalar field. Especially he estimated the upper bound for the expected number of particles in any wave packet belonging to Hout spontaneously produced from the state |0＞in, which confirms the traditional belief that extremal black holes do not radiate particles. Making some modifications, we demonstrate that the analysis can go through for a charged scalar field.     

Chronal Isomorphism, Singularities and Black Holes

The concept of Chronal Isomorphism was discussed in [1]. This paper discusses more properties which include images of past and future sets, naked singular points introduced by Penrose [7] and black holes. The validity of the singularity theorem of Joshi [10] in the image space is also discussed.     

Gravitational Collapse of Null Strange Quark Fluid and Cosmic Censorship

We study the gravitational collapse of the general spherically symmetric null strange quark fluid having the equation of state, p = ( – 4B)/n, where B is the bag constant. It is an interesting feature that the initial data set giving rise to a naked singularity in the Vaidya collapse of null fluid gets covered due to the presence of the strange quark matter component. Its implication for the Cosmic Censorship Conjecture is discussed.     

Cosmology with Gravitational Waves: A Review

Standard sirens have been the central paradigm in gravitational-wave cosmology so far. From the gravitational wave signature of compact star binaries, it is possible to measure the luminosity distance of the source directly, and if additional information on the source redshift is provided, a measurement of the cosmological expansion can be performed. This review article discusses several methodologies that have been proposed to use gravitational waves for cosmological studies. Methods that use only gravitational-wave signals and methods that use gravitational waves in conjunction with additional observations such as electromagnetic counterparts and galaxy catalogs will be discussed. The review also discusses the most recent results on gravitational-wave cosmology, starting from the binary neutron star merger GW170817 and its electromagnetic counterpart and finishing with the population of binary black holes, observed with the third Gravitational-wave Transient Catalog GWTC–3.