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We study the energy issue in critical collapse of a spherically symmetric scalar field. It is found that in critical collapse, the contribution from the material energy is greater than that from the gravitational energy. The quantity $m/r$ plays an important role in identifying the formation of apparent horizon in gravitational collapse, where $m$ is the Misner-Sharp mass and $r$ the areal radius. We observe that in critical collapse, the maximum value of $m/r$ fluctuates between $2/15$ and $4/15$. This denotes a large gap between critical collapse and black hole formation for which the criterion is $m/r=1/2$., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

In this paper, we construct a class of collapsing spacetimes in vacuum without any symmetries. The spacetime contains a black hole region which is bounded from the past by the future event horizon. It possesses a Cauchy hypersurface with trivial topology which is located outside the black hole region. Based on existing techniques in the literature, the spacetime can in principle be constructed to be past geodesically complete and asymptotic to Minkowski space. The construction is based on a semi-global existence result of the vacuum Einstein equations built on a modified version of the a priori estimates that were originally established by Christodoulou in his work on the formation of trapped surface, and a gluing construction carried out inside the black hole. In particular, the full detail of the a priori estimates needed for the existence is provided, which can be regarded as a simplification of Christodoulou's original argument., Comment: 47 pages, 10 figures, accepted version

Published in 1999, Christodoulou proved that the naked singularities of a self-gravitating scalar field are not stable in spherical symmetry and therefore the cosmic censorship conjecture is true in this context. The original proof is by contradiction and sharp estimates are obtained strictly depending on spherical symmetry. In this paper, appropriate a priori estimates for the solution are obtained. These estimates are more relaxed but sufficient for giving another robust argument in proving the instability, in particular not by contradiction. In another related paper, we are able to prove instability theorems of the spherical symmetric naked singularities under certain isotropic gravitational perturbations without symmetries. The argument given in this paper plays a central role., Comment: 14 pages

In this paper, we initiate the study of the instability of naked singularities without symmetries. In a series of papers, Christodoulou proved that naked singularities are not stable in the context of the spherically symmetric Einstein equations coupled with a massless scalar field. We study in this paper the next simplest case: a characteristic initial value problem of this coupled system with the initial data given on two intersecting null cones, the incoming one of which is assumed to be spherically symmetric and singular at its vertex, and the outgoing one of which has no symmetries. It is shown that, arbitrarily fixing the initial scalar field, the set of the initial conformal metrics on the outgoing null cone such that the maximal future development does not have any sequences of closed trapped surfaces approaching the singularity, is of first category in the whole space in which the shear tensors are continuous. Such a set can then be viewed as exceptional, although the exceptionality is weaker than the at least $1$ co-dimensionality in spherical symmetry. Almost equivalently, it is also proved that, arbitrarily fixing an incoming null cone $\underline{C}_\varepsilon$ to the future of the initial incoming null cone, the set of the initial conformal metrics such that the maximal future development has at least one closed trapped surface before $\underline{C}_\varepsilon$, contains an open and dense subset of the whole space. Since the initial scalar field can be chosen such that the singularity is naked if the initial shear is set to be zero, we may say that the spherical naked singularities of a self-gravitating scalar field are not stable under gravitational perturbations. This in particular gives new families of non-spherically symmetric gravitational perturbations different from the original spherically symmetric scalar perturbations given by Christodoulou., Comment: 88 pages, 2 figures. In this new version, the main result is replaced by a statement on all (not only isotropic) perturbations with exceptionality being of first category, weaker than being of co-dimension at least 1. The title changes according to this

In the previous paper \cite{L-Z}, for a characteristic problem with not necessarily small initial data given on a complete null cone decaying like that in the work \cite{Ch-K} of the stability of Minkowski spacetime by Christodoulou and Klainerman, we proved the local existence in retarded time, which means the solution to the vacuum Einstein equations exists in a uniform future neighborhood, while the global existence in retarded time is the weak cosmic censorship conjecture. In this paper, we prove that the local existence in retarded time still holds when the data is assumed to decay slower, like that in Bieri's work \cite{Bie} on the extension to the stability of Minkowski spacetime. Such decay guarantees the existence of the limit of the Hawking mass on the initial null cone, when approaching to infinity, in an optimal way., Comment: 30 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1406.0048

We consider a characteristic problem of the vacuum Einstein equations with part of the initial data given on a future complete null cone with suitable decay, and show that the solution exists uniformly around the null cone for general such initial data. We can then define a segment of the future null infinity. The initial data are not required to be small and the decaying condition inherits from the works of \cite{Ch-K} and \cite{K-N}., Comment: 52 pages

We show the existence of complete, asymptotically flat Cauchy initial data for the vacuum Einstein field equations, free of trapped surfaces, whose future development must admit a trapped surface. Moreover, the datum is exactly a constant time slice in Minkowski space-time inside and exactly a constant time slice in Kerr space-time outside. The proof makes use of the full strength of Christodoulou's work on the dynamical formation of black holes and Corvino-Schoen's work on the constructions of initial data set., Comment: 63 pages, 1 figure