Spacetime junctions and the collapse to black holes in higher dimensions

Abstract

We review recent results about the modelling of gravitational collapse to black holes in higher dimensions. The models are constructed through the junction of two exact solutions of the Einstein field equations: an interior collapsing fluid solution and a vacuum exterior solution. The vacuum exterior solutions are either static or containing gravitational waves. We then review the global geometrical properties of the matched solutions which, besides black holes, may include the existence of naked singularities and wormholes. In the case of radiating exteriors, we show that the data at the boundary can be chosen to be, in some sense, arbitrarily close to the data for the Schwarzschild-Tangherlini solution.