Spherical collapse of inhomogeneous dust cloud in the Lovelock theory

Abstract

We study gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric inhomogeneous dust cloud in the Lovelock theory without cosmological constant. We show that the final fate of gravitational collapse in this theory depends on the spacetime dimensions. In odd dimensions the naked singularities formed are found to be massive. In the even dimensions,on the other hand, the naked singularities are found to be massless. We also show that the curvature strength of naked singularity is independent of the spacetime dimensions in odd dimensions. However, it depends on the spacetime dimensions in even dimension.