Outer trapped surface formation from gravitational waves collision

Abstract: We give a new rigorous construction of outer trapped surface formation in smooth vacuum spacetimes without symmetry assumptions. The outer trapped surface is produced by the collision of two transversely localized, nearly plane-fronted gravitational waves described by short pulse data. The outer trapped surface is obtained by joining two smooth pieces along a curve with their future-directed outer null normals matching continuously. The incompleteness of the maximal future development is then established by adapting Penrose's original argument. This construction is inspired by Penrose's argument in constructing a marginally outer trapped surface in the collision of two ultra-relativistic particles modeled by the Aichelburg--Sexl solution.