Critical collapse still requires a kind of fine-tuning of
initial data that does not seem to arise naturally in the
astrophysical world. Niemeyer and Jedamzik [102] have suggested a scenario that gives rise to such fine-tuning.
In the early universe, quantum fluctuations of the metric and
matter can be important, for example providing the seeds of
galaxy formation. If they are large enough, these fluctuations
may even collapse immediately, giving rise to what is called
primordial black holes. Large quantum fluctuations are
exponentially more unlikely than small ones,
, where
is the density contrast of the fluctuation. One would therefore
expect the spectrum of primordial black holes to be sharply
peaked at the minimal
that leads to black hole formation. That is the required
fine-tuning. In the presence of fine-tuning, the black hole mass
is much smaller than the initial mass of the collapsing object,
here the density fluctuation. In consequence, the peak of the
primordial black hole spectrum might be expected to be at
exponentially smaller values of the black hole mass than expected
naively. See also [103,
124].
The primordial black holes work assumes that the critical phenomena will be of type II. If one could fine-tune the gravitational collapse of stars made of realistic matter (i.e. not scalar fields) it seems likely that type I critical phenomena could be observed, i.e. there would be a universal mass gap. Critical collapse is not likely to be relevant in the real universe (at least at the present epoch) as there is no mechanism for fine-tuning of initial data.
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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 |