Black Holes from Colliding Wavepackets

Abstract

Arguments for black hole formation in collisions of high-energy particles have rested on the emergence of a closed trapped surface in the classical geometry of two colliding Aichelburg-Sexl solutions. Recent analysis has, however, shown that curvatures and quantum fluctuations are large on this apparent horizon, potentially invalidating a semiclassical analysis. We show that this problem is an artifact of the unphysical classical point-particle limit: for a particle described by a quantum wavepacket, or for a continuous matter distribution, trapped surfaces indeed form in a controlled regime.