Gravitational Instability Caused by the Weight of Heat

Abstract

Thermal energy points towards a disordered, completely uniform state act to counter gravity's tendency to generate order and structure through gravitational collapse. It is, therefore, expected to contribute to the stabilization of a self-gravitating, classical ideal gas over collapse. However, I identified an instability that always occurs at sufficiently high energies: the high-energy or relativistic gravothermal instability. I argue here that this instability presents an analogous core-halo structure as its Newtonian counterpart, the Antonov instability. The main difference is that in the former case the core is dominated by the gravitation of thermal energy and not rest mass energy. A relativistic generalization of Antonov's instability-the low-energy gravothermal instability-also occurs. The two turning points, which make themselves evident as a double spiral of the caloric curve, approach each other as relativistic effects become more intense and eventually merge in a single point. Thus, the high and low-energy cases may be realized as two aspects of a single phenomenon-the gravothermal instability-which involves a core-halo separation and an intrinsic heat flow. Finally, I argue that the core formed during a core-collapse supernova is subject to the relativistic gravothermal instability if it becomes sufficiently hot and compactified at the time of the bounce. In this case, it will continue to collapse towards the formation of a black hole.

Relativistic Gravitational Collapse by Thermal Mass

“…Therefore, by this simple analysis it is in addition predicted that this characteristic temperature depends on the compactness of rest mass GM rest /Rc 2 . The result ( 4) is astonishingly close to the exact one, obtained by a precise relativistic treatment [2][3][4][5][6]. We consider the equation of state of the relativistic ideal gas…”

Gravothermal catastrophe and critical dimension in a $D$-dimensional asymptotically AdS spacetime

“…Thus the increasing thermal energy raises the compactness of the system defined by the total mass divided by the radius. In general relativity, the system cannot avoid gravitational collapse if it is sufficiently compact [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. As a result, the series of equilibria has a double spiral structure, and the two catastrophic instabilities appear in association with two turning points.…”

Thermal equilibrium states and instability of self-gravitating particles in an asymptotically AdS spacetime

“…This expectation was shown to be correct in Refs. [11][12][13][14][15][16] for massive particle systems (see also [17,18] for radiation). They showed a curve for the series of equilibria has a double spiral structure.…”