Critical Phenomena in Gravitational Collapse: The Studies So Far

Anzhong Wang

Published 2001-04-23Version 1

Studies of black hole formation from gravitational collapse have revealed interesting non-linear phenomena at the threshold of black hole formation. In particular, in 1993 Choptuik studied the collapse of a massless scalar field with spherical symmetry and found some behaviour, which is quite similar to the critical phenomena well-known in {\em Statistical Mechanics} and {\em Quantum Field Theory}. Universality and echoing of the critical solution and power-law scaling of the black hole masses have given rise to the name {\em Critical Phenomena in Gravitational Collapse}. Choptuik's results were soon confirmed both numerically and semi-analytically, and have extended to various other matter fields. In this paper, we shall give a brief introduction to this fascinating and relatively new area, and provides an updated publication list. An analytical "toy" model of critical collapse is presented, and some current investigations are given.