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arXiv · 0811.3969

Critical formation of trapped surfaces in the collision of gravitational shock waves

Luis Alvarez-Gaume·Cesar Gomez·Agustin Sabio Vera·Alireza Tavanfar·Miguel A. Vazquez-Mozo
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Abstract

We study the formation of marginally trapped surfaces in the head-on collision of two shock waves both in anti-de Sitter and Minkowski space-time in various dimensions as a function of the spread of the energy density in transverse space. For D=4 and D=5 it is shown that there exists a critical value of this spread above which no solution to the trapped surface equation is found. In four dimensions the trapped surface at criticality has a finite size, whereas in five the critical size vanishes. In both cases we find scaling relations characterized by critical exponents. Finally, when D>5 there is always a solution to the trapped surface equation for any transverse spread.

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Luis Alvarez-Gaume, Cesar Gomez, Agustin Sabio Vera, Alireza Tavanfar, Miguel A. Vazquez-Mozo. 2008-11-25. Critical formation of trapped surfaces in the collision of gravitational shock waves. https://doi.org/10.1088/1126-6708%2F2009%2F02%2F009

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