Spherical collapse of inhomogeneous dust cloud in the Lovelock theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the gravitational collapse of an inhomogeneous dust cloud behaves in Lovelock gravity, revealing dimension-dependent outcomes for naked singularities and their properties.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the dimension-dependent nature of naked singularities in Lovelock gravity during dust cloud collapse.

Findings

Naked singularities are massive in odd dimensions.

Naked singularities are massless in even dimensions.

Curvature strength varies with spacetime dimensions in even dimensions.

Abstract

We study gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric inhomogeneous dust cloud in the Lovelock theory without cosmological constant. We show that the final fate of gravitational collapse in this theory depends on the spacetime dimensions. In odd dimensions the naked singularities formed are found to be massive. In the even dimensions,on the other hand, the naked singularities are found to be massless. We also show that the curvature strength of naked singularity is independent of the spacetime dimensions in odd dimensions. However, it depends on the spacetime dimensions in even dimension.