English

The shadow of a collapsing dark star

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2018-05-15 v2

Abstract

The shadow of a black hole is usually calculated, either analytically or numerically, on the assumption that the black hole is eternal, i.e., that it existed for all time. Here we ask the question of how this shadow comes about in the course of time when a black hole is formed by gravitational collapse. To that end we consider a star that is spherically symmetric, dark and non-transparent and we assume that it begins, at some instant of time, to collapse in free fall like a ball of dust. We analytically calculate the dependence on time of the angular radius of the shadow, first for a static observer who is watching the collapse from a certain distance and then for an observer who is falling towards the centre following the collapsing star.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.04901,
  title  = {The shadow of a collapsing dark star},
  author = {Stefanie Schneider and Volker Perlick},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.04901},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

23 pages, 9 figures; discussion slightly extended

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:21:43.815Z