Thesis

Critical Phenomena in Gravitational Collapse

• Call:

  IDPASC Portugal - PHD Programme 2017

• Academic Year:

  2017 / 2018

• Domain:

  General Relativity

• Supervisor:

  David Hilditch

• Co-Supervisor:

  Miguel Zilhao

• Institution:

  Instituto Superior Técnico

• Host Institution:

  Instituto Superior Técnico

• Abstract:

  In the early 1990s Choptuik discovered a remarkable feature in gravitational collapse [1]. Considering spherically symmetric one-parameter families of spacetimes with dynamics driven by a massless scalar field, such that weak members of the family eventually settle down to flat-space and strong members of the family contain black holes, he studied the transition from the former to the latter. In this regime an amazing structure appears in the solutions. The critical threshold even contains a naked singularity! A closely related but still open question is whether or not such critical phenomena occur in the collapse of gravitational waves. See [2,3,4] for work on this. The aim of this project is to answer this question one way or the other. To do so a number of techniques, both numerical and analytical, will be employed. A key goal will be the development of a method that can manage the extreme behavior of spacetimes close to the critical solution. [1]. Choptuik. Phys. Rev. Lett., 70:9, 1993. [2]. Gundlach and Martin-Garcia. Living Reviews in Relativity, 10(5), 2007. [3]. Abrahams and Evans. Phys. Rev. Lett., 70:2980, 1993. [4]. Hilditch, Weyhausen, Bruegmann. arXiv:1706.01829v1