English

Shock waves in classical dust collapse

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-01-23 v2

Abstract

During gravitational collapse of dust in spherical symmetry, matter particles may collide forming shell crossing surfaces (SCS) on which the Einstein equations become indeterministic. We show that there is a unique evolution beyond SCS such that a propagating shock wave forms, the metric remains continuous, and the stress-energy tensor dynamically becomes that of a thin shell. We give numerical simulations that exhibit this result.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.14883,
  title  = {Shock waves in classical dust collapse},
  author = {Viqar Husain and Hassan Mehmood},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.14883},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

7 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:05:12.445Z