Anti-deSitter gravitational collapse

TL;DR

This paper develops a formalism for analyzing spherically symmetric scalar field collapse in various dimensions and cosmological constants, and uses it to study critical phenomena in four-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime.

Contribution

It introduces a general formalism for scalar collapse in arbitrary dimensions and cosmological constants, and applies it to reveal universal critical behavior in AdS space.

Findings

Critical behavior observed at black hole formation threshold

Critical exponent is independent of the cosmological constant

Formalism applicable to various spacetime dimensions

Abstract

We describe a formalism for studying spherically symmetric collapse of the massless scalar field in any spacetime dimension, and for any value of the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. The formalism is used for numerical simulations of gravitational collapse in four spacetime dimensions with negative $\Lambda$. We observe critical behaviour at the onset of black hole formation, and find that the critical exponent is independent of $\Lambda$.