2022/09/26 by Vitor Cardoso, Vítor Cardoso, David Hilditch +3 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1361-6382/acb9cd
arxiv published 2022/09/26 · arxiv updated 2022/09/26 · openalex publication_date 2023/02/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Abstract Stationary compact astrophysical objects such as black holes and neutron stars behave as classical systems from the gravitational point of view. Their (observable) curvature is everywhere ‘small’. Here we investigate whether mergers of such objects, or other strongly dynamical spacetimes such as collapsing configurations, may probe the strong-curvature regime of general relativity. Our results indicate that dynamical black hole spacetimes always result in a modest increase <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:math> in the Kretschmann scalar, relative to the stationary state. In contrast, we find that the Kretschmann scalar can dynamically increase by orders of magnitude, during the gravitational collapse of scalar fields, and that the (normalized) peak curvature does not correspond to that of the critical solution. Nevertheless, without fine tuning of initial data, this increase lies far below that needed to render quantum-gravity corrections important.