Formation and critical collapse of Skyrmions

Abstract

We study first-order phase transitions in the gravitational collapse of spherically symmetric Skyrmions. Static sphaleron solutions are shown to play the role of critical solutions separating black-hole spacetimes from no-black-hole spacetimes. In particular, we find a new type of first-order phase transition where subcritical data do not disperse, but evolve towards a static regular stable solution. We also demonstrate explicitly that the near-critical solutions depart from the intermediate asymptotic regime along the unstable manifold of the critical solution.