München 1997 – scientific programme

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GR: Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 6: Numerik

GR 6.2: Talk

Wednesday, March 19, 1997, 16:50–17:10, HS 133

Recent results on critical phenomena in gravitational collapse — •Carsten Gundlach — Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik, Schlaatzweg 1, 14473 Potsdam

Critical phenomena in gravitational collapse, first discovered by Choptuik in 1992, are now well understood, at least in spherical symmetry. Echoing, universality, and the famous mass scaling law M ∼ (p−p_*)^γ can be derived. The echoing period Delta and the critical exponent gamma can be calculated semi-analytically for any system in spherical symmetry. Recent advances now allow making these calculations for realistic matter, whose equations of motion are not scale-invariant. They also allow for electric charge in the collapsing matter. Finally, the mass scaling law has a universal fine structure overlaid on the basic power law. Work remains to be done on systems without spherical symmetry, and in particular with angular momentum.