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Critical Behaviour In The Gravitational Collapse Of The Scalar Field., Andrew. Debenedictis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An in depth study of general relativistic gravitational collapse is done using the massless scalar field as the material model in a spherically symmetric space-time. Particular attention is paid to the critical regime which separates black hole formation and field dispersal. It is found that at this threshold certain field variables display discrete self-similarity with a period of $\Delta\sb{\rm t}\approx e\sp{-3.45}$ and with each repetition on a spatial scale $\rm\Delta\sb{r}\approx31.4$ times smaller. These findings are in agreement with behaviour discovered by Choptuik. A study of black hole masses which form satisfies a power law with the critical exponent $\gamma=0.364.$ Also, …