SPHERICALLY SYMMETRIC GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE OF A DUST CLOUD IN EINSTEIN–GAUSS–BONNET GRAVITY

Abstract

We explore the gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric dust cloud in the Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet gravity without a cosmological constant, and obtain three families of LTB-like solutions. It is shown that the Gauss–Bonnet term has a profound influence on the nature of singularities, and the global structure of spacetime changes drastically from the analogous general relativistic case. Interestingly, the formation of a naked, massive and uncentral singularity, allowed in five-dimensional spacetime, is forbidden if D≥6. Moreover, such singularity is gravitational strong and a serious counterexample to CCH.