On the Hoop conjecture and the weak cosmic censorship conjecture for the axisymmetric Einstein-Vlasov system

TL;DR

This paper investigates gravitational collapse in the axially symmetric Einstein-Vlasov system, testing the weak cosmic censorship and Hoop conjectures with highly prolate initial data, and finds consistent formation of apparent horizons supporting these conjectures.

Contribution

It provides the first study of highly prolate initial data in the Einstein-Vlasov system, demonstrating horizon formation and supporting the weak cosmic censorship and Hoop conjectures beyond dust-like matter.

Findings

Apparent horizons form in all considered cases.

Polar circumference at horizon formation is within 12% of 4π times the mass.

Supports the validity of the weak cosmic censorship and Hoop conjectures for the Einstein-Vlasov system.

Abstract

We consider gravitational collapse for the axially symmetric Einstein-Vlasov system. We investigate the weak cosmic censorship conjecture in the case of highly prolate initial data and we investigate the ``only if" part of the Hoop conjecture. Shapiro and Teukolsky initiated a similar study in 1991 \cite{Shapiro1991} where they found support that the weak cosmic censorship conjecture was violated for sufficiently prolate spheroidal initial data. More recently, independent studies of this problem have been carried out by Yoo, Harada and Okawa \cite{Yoo2017} and by East \cite{East2019}. A common feature in these works is that the initial data are dust-like. Dust can be considered as a \textit{singular} case of matter described by the Einstein-Vlasov system. The original motivation by Shapiro and Teukolsky to study this problem is based on the Lin-Mestel-Shu instability for gravitational collapse of uniform spheroids in the case of dust in Newtonian gravity. We argue that the Lin-Mestel-Shu solution is not relevant for studying the weak cosmic censorship of the Einstein-Vlasov system and we argue that dust-like initial data is also not relevant. To investigate collapse of highly prolate spheroidal configurations for the Einstein-Vlasov system is nevertheless interesting in view of the Hoop conjecture. By choosing highly prolate initial data the weak cosmic censorship conjecture is seriously tested. We carry out such a study for initial data which are not dust-like. We find formation of an apparent horizon in all cases we consider, which provides support for the weak cosmic censorship conjecture. In our tests of the Hoop conjecture we compute the polar circumference $\mathcal{C}_{H,p}$ at the time when the apparent horizon forms and find that it is less than 12% above $4\pi M$, where $M$ is the irreducible mass of the apparent horizon, which agrees with the spirit of the Hoop conjecture.