Both types of behavior arise because there is a solution which is an intermediate attractor, or attractor of codimension one. Its basin of attraction is the black hole threshold itself, a hypersurface of codimension one that bisects phase space. Any time evolution that begins with initial data near the black hole threshold (but not necessarily close to the critical solution) first approaches the critical solution, then moves away from it along its one growing perturbation mode. At late times, the solution only remembers on which side of the black hole threshold the initial data were, and how far away from the threshold.
Our understanding of critical phenomena rests on this dynamical systems picture, but crucial details of the picture have not yet been defined rigorously. Nevertheless, it suggests semi-analytic perturbative calculations that have been successful in predicting the scaling of black hole mass and charge in critical collapse to high precision.
The importance of type II behavior lies in providing a natural route from large (the initial data) to arbitrarily small (the final black hole) scales, with possible applications to astrophysics and quantum gravity. Fine-tuning any one generic parameter in the initial data to the black hole threshold, for a number of matter models, without assuming any other symmetries, will do the trick.
Type II critical behavior also clarifies what version of cosmic censorship one can hope to prove. At least in some matter models (scalar field, perfect fluid), fine-tuning any smooth one-parameter family of smooth, asymptotically flat initial data, without any symmetries, gives rise to a naked singularity. In this sense the set of initial data that form a naked singularity is codimension one in the full phase space of smooth asymptotically flat initial data for well-behaved matter. Any statement of cosmic censorship in the future can only exclude naked singularities arising from generic initial data.
Finally, critical phenomena are arguably the outstanding contribution of numerical relativity to knowledge in GR to date, and they continue to act as a motivation and a source of testbeds for numerical relativity.
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Critical Phenomena in Gravitational Collapse
Carsten Gundlach http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-1999-4 © Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. ISSN 1433-8351 Problems/Comments to livrev@aei-potsdam.mpg.de |