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Vacuum initial data, singularities, and cosmic censorship

Abrahams, Andrew M. and Heiderich, Karen R. and Shapiro, Stuart L. and Teukolsky, Saul A. (1992) Vacuum initial data, singularities, and cosmic censorship. Physical Review D, 46 (6). pp. 2452-2463. ISSN 2470-0010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.46.2452. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20180719-142636714

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Abstract

The formation of a naked singularity in a vacuum, asymptotically flat spacetime would be a clear violation of cosmic censorship. We find initial value solutions to Einstein's field equations that may lead to this behavior. We construct two families of asymptotically flat, axisymmetric vaccum solutions at a moment of time symmetry. The limiting members of these families are singular. Our first family represents a linear string of Schwarzschild black holes. We study the divergence of the gravitational tidal field outside the holes as their number along the string is increased. Our second family consists of prolate Brill gravitational wave packets. We examine the tidal field strength as the characteristic width of the wave is reduced towards zero. In both cases we find that configurations can be constructed with arbitrarily large fields that are not clothed by apparent horizons. These configurations are characterized by long, prolate concentrations of mass energy. We analyze our results in the context of the hoop conjecture.


Item Type:Article
Related URLs:
URLURL TypeDescription
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.46.2452DOIArticle
ORCID:
AuthorORCID
Teukolsky, Saul A.0000-0001-9765-4526
Additional Information:© 1992 American Physical Society. (Received 1 April 1992) We acknowledge useful conversations with G. B. Cook, L. S. Finn, J. L. Friedman, and K. S. Thorne. This research was supported in part by NSF Grants Nos. AST 90-15451 and PHY 90-07834 and NASA Grant No. NAGW-2364 at Cornell University. A. A. was supported by the NSF Division of Advanced Scientific Computing. Computations in support of this work were performed at the Cornell National Supercomputing Facility, which is supported in part by the National Science Foundation, IBM Corporation, New York State, and the Cornell Research Institute.
Funders:
Funding AgencyGrant Number
NSFAST 90-15451
NSFPHY 90-07834
NASANAGW-2364
IBM Corp.UNSPECIFIED
State of New YorkUNSPECIFIED
Cornell Research InstituteUNSPECIFIED
Issue or Number:6
Classification Code:PACS number(s): 04.20.Cv, 04.30.+x, 97.60.Lf
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.46.2452
Record Number:CaltechAUTHORS:20180719-142636714
Persistent URL:https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20180719-142636714
Usage Policy:No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.
ID Code:88014
Collection:CaltechAUTHORS
Deposited By: George Porter
Deposited On:19 Jul 2018 23:05
Last Modified:16 Nov 2021 00:22

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