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.
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