2005/01/31 by Burkhard Zink, Nikolaos Stergioulas, Ian Hawke +4 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Classical mechanics #Fragmentation (computing) #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #General relativity #Physics #Polytrope #Polytropic process #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Stars #Supermassive black hole #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.96.161101
published as Phys.Rev.Lett.96:161101,2006 · 4 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2005/02/11 · openalex publication_date 2006/04/26 · arxiv updated 2010/11/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate new paths to supermassive black hole formation by considering the general relativistic evolution of a differentially rotating polytrope with a toroidal shape. We find that this polytrope is unstable to nonaxisymmetric modes, which leads to a fragmentation into self-gravitating, collapsing components. In the case of one such fragment, we apply a simplified adaptive mesh refinement technique to follow the evolution to the formation of an apparent horizon centered on the fragment. This is the first study of the onset of nonaxisymmetric dynamical instabilities of supermassive stars in full general relativity.