Black Hole Formation in AdS Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet Gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how adding a Gauss-Bonnet term affects the stability and black hole formation in Anti-de Sitter spacetime, revealing new structures, chaotic behavior, and potential naked singularities.

Contribution

It provides detailed numerical analysis of AdS Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, uncovering new phenomena in black hole formation and stability not previously observed.

Findings

New structure in Choptuik scaling plots

Evidence of chaotic behavior at transition points

Possible formation of naked singularities below mass bounds

Abstract

AdS spacetime has been shown numerically to be unstable against a large class of arbitrarily small perturbations. In arXiv:1410.1869, the authors presented a preliminary study of the effects on stability of changing the local dynamics by adding a Gauss-Bonnet term to the Einstein action. Here we provide further details as well as new results with improved numerical methods. In particular, we elucidate new structure in Choptuik scaling plots. We also provide evidence of chaotic behavior at the transition between immediate horizon formation and horizon formation after the matter pulse reflects from the AdS conformal boundary. Finally, we present data suggesting the formation of naked singularities in spacetimes with ADM mass below the algebraic bound for black hole formation.