Session Q20 - Gravitational Radiation - Theory and Numerical Relativity.
MIXED session, Monday afternoon, May 01
102A, LBCC
We present results of numerical simulations of the formation of black holes from the gravitational collapse of a massless, minimally-coupled scalar field in 2+1 dimensional anti de-Sitter (AdS) spacetime. The vacuum (modulo a negative cosmological constant) or BTZ black hole solutions are interesting in that they can be constructed through topological identifications in AdS spacetime, and hence are spacetimes of constant curvature. We show that in the dynamical formation of BTZ black holes a curvature singularity develops at the origin. We also discuss our attempts to find critical behaviour at the threshold of black hole formation -- a task complicated by the finite light-crossing time of signals in AdS spacetime.