Collapsing shells, critical phenomena, and black hole formation

Abstract

We study the gravitational collapse of two thin shells of matter, in asymptotically flat spacetime or constrained to move within a spherical box. We show that this simple two-body system has surprisingly rich dynamics, which includes prompt collapse to a black hole, perpetually oscillating solutions or black hole formation at arbitrarily large times. Collapse is induced by shell crossing and the black hole mass depends sensitively on the number of shell crossings. At certain critical points, the black hole mass exhibits critical behavior, determined by the change in parity (even or odd) of the number of crossings, with or without mass-gap during the transition. Some of the features we observe are reminiscent of confined scalars undergoing 'turbulent' dynamics.