Gravitational Collapse of Perfect Fluid in N-Dimensional Spherically Symmetric Spacetimes

Abstract

The Riemann, Ricci and Einstein tensors for N-dimensional spherically symmetric spacetimes in various systems of coordinates are studied, and the general metric for conformally flat spacetimes is given. As an application, all the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker-like solutions for a perfect fluid with an equation of state $p = k \rho$ are found. Then, these solutions are used to model the gravitational collapse of a compact ball, by first cutting them along a timelike hypersurface and then joining them with asymptotically flat Vaidya solutions. It is found that when the collapse has continuous self-similarity, the formation of black holes always starts with zero mass, and when the collapse has no such symmetry, the formation of black holes always starts with a finite non-zero mass.