On the occurrence of naked singularity in spherically symmetric gravitational collapse (Q1344503)

The authors investigate the collapse of spherically symmetric configurations in general relativity. For certain rather general configurations they study central singularities and find necessary and sufficient conditions for these singularities to be naked, i.e. to violate cosmic censorship. They assume that the metric and the energy momentum tensor can be simultaneously diagonalized and write \[ g = - \text{exp}(2\nu(t,r)) dt^ 2 + \text{exp}(2\psi(t,r)) dr^ 2 + R^ 2(t,r) d\Omega^ 2, \] where \(d \Omega^ 2\) is the metric of the standard 2-sphere. In these coordinates the energy momentum tensor is given by \[ T = \rho(t,r) \text{exp}(2\nu(t,r)) dt^ 2 + p_ 1(t,r) \text{exp}(2\psi(t,r)) dr^ 2 + p_ 2(r,t) R^ 2(t,r) d\Omega^ 2. \] They assume that there exists an initial \(t = t_ i\) such that for all \(t < t_ i\) spacetime is singularity-free. Further, the first central singularity is assumed to emerge at \(t = t_ i\), \(r = 0\) (They make a claim that without loss of generality they can assume \(r = 0\). However, to me it seems that their argument makes use of the condition that the central, comoving observer ends in this initial singularity). They further assume that in a neighbourhood of the singularity the functions \(r\), \(R\) instead of \(t,r\) can be used as coordinates. They write down the Einstein equation for this configuration in terms of \(F(r,R)\), \(G(r,R)\), \(H(r,R)\), \(T(r,R)\), \(p_ 2(r,R)\) where \(F(r,R)\) corresponds to the usual mass function for spherically symmetric spacetimes, \(G\), \(H\) are squares of normalized derivatives of \(R\), and \(T = {\partial R(t,r)\over \partial r}\). \(F\) and \(p_ 2\) are regarded as free functions specifying the matter model. The Einstein equation reduces then to a single parabolic PDE for \(G\). \(T\), \(H\) can be read off by inspection. In order to study the central singularity in more detail they assume that there exists an \(\alpha \geq 1\) such that \(T/r^ \alpha\) has a finite limit as the singularity is approached. They then consider the equation for radial null geodesics. It turns out that the singularity violates cosmic censorship if and only if a certain algebraic equation (their equation (25)) has real, positive solutions. Finally, they find sufficient conditions for this singularity to be a strong curvature singularity. Their result strongly suggests that known shell focussing singularities which violate cosmic censorship are stable in the spherically symmetric class.