Critical phenomena in the gravitational collapse of electromagnetic waves

TL;DR

This study numerically explores the critical behavior in gravitational collapse of electromagnetic waves, revealing approximate power-law scaling, discrete self-similarity, and universality, with implications for vacuum gravitational wave collapse.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical analysis of critical phenomena in electromagnetic gravitational collapse, highlighting approximate self-similarity and universality.

Findings

Power-law scaling of maximum density near criticality

Observation of approximate discrete self-similarity with specific echoing period

Evidence of universality across different initial data families

Abstract

We numerically investigate the threshold of black-hole formation in the gravitational collapse of electromagnetic waves in axisymmetry. We find approximate power-law scaling $\rho_{\rm max}\sim (\eta_*-\eta)^{-2\gamma}$ of the maximum density in the time evolution of near-subcritical data with $\gamma\simeq 0.145$, where $\eta$ is the amplitude of the initial data. We directly observe approximate discrete self-similarity in near-critical time evolutions with a log-scale echoing period of $\Delta\simeq 0.55$. The critical solution is approximately the same for two families of initial data, providing some evidence of universality. Neither the discrete self-similarity nor the universality, however, are exact. We speculate that the absence of an exactly discrete self-similarity might be caused by the interplay of electromagnetic and gravitational wave degrees of freedom, or by the presence of higher-order angular multipoles, or both, and discuss implications of our findings for the critical collapse of vacuum gravitational waves.