The spherically symmetric collapse of a massless scalar field

TL;DR

This paper presents a numerical analysis of spherically symmetric collapse of a massless scalar field, confirming earlier results and exploring the behavior near black hole formation thresholds, including high curvature regions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical study confirming previous findings and investigates the formation of high curvature regions near black hole thresholds in scalar field collapse.

Findings

Collapse leads to black holes or dispersion depending on initial data strength.

Near the threshold, high curvature regions can form close to the axis.

Results support the critical phenomena in gravitational collapse.

Abstract

We report on a numerical study of the spherically symmetric collapse of a self-gravitating massless scalar field. Earlier results of Choptuik(1992, 1994) are confirmed. The field either disperses to infinity or collapses to a black hole, depending on the strength of the initial data. For evolutions where the strength is close to but below the strength required to form a black hole, we argue that there will be a region close to the axis where the scalar curvature and field energy density can reach arbitrarily large levels, and which is visible to distant observers