Critical Collapse of Rotating Radiation Fluids

Area of Science:

• Relativistic astrophysics
• Computational physics
• General relativity

Background:

• Understanding black hole formation is crucial in astrophysics.
• Simulating critical phenomena in general relativity presents significant computational challenges.
• Previous studies have explored critical collapse, but fully relativistic simulations of rotating fluids were lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To perform the first fully relativistic simulations of critical collapse for rotating radiation fluids.
• To investigate critical scaling behavior in both subcritical and supercritical evolutions.
• To measure black hole mass and angular momentum, and determine critical exponents.

Main Methods:

• Utilized fully relativistic numerical simulations.
• Analyzed evolutions of rotating radiation fluids under critical collapse conditions.
• Measured black hole properties (mass, angular momentum) and compared with theoretical predictions.

Main Results:

• Observed critical scaling in both dispersing (subcritical) and black hole-forming (supercritical) evolutions.
• Measured critical exponents for mass and angular momentum, consistent with perturbative results.
• Found critical exponents to be universal, independent of angular momentum and crossing direction of the critical curve.

Conclusions:

• The angular momentum decreases more rapidly than the square of the mass near criticality.
• Simulations suggest the formation of nonspinning black holes as criticality is approached.
• Numerical data show excellent agreement with closed-form extensions of power-law scalings for near-critical black holes.