{"paper":{"title":"Black Hole Formation from the Collision of Plane-Fronted Gravitational Waves","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["hep-th"],"primary_cat":"gr-qc","authors_text":"Frans Pretorius, William E. East","submitted_at":"2018-07-30T20:44:23Z","abstract_excerpt":"This paper introduces a new effort to study the collision of plane-fronted gravitational waves in four dimensional, asymptotically flat spacetime, using numerical solutions of the Einstein equations. The pure vacuum problem requires singular, Aichelburg-Sexl type sources to achieve finite energy solutions, which are problematic to treat both mathematically and numerically. Instead then, we use null (massless) particles to source non-trivial geometry within the initial wave fronts. The main purposes of this paper are to (a) motivate the problem, (b) introduce methods for numerically solving the"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1807.11562","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}