Dust collapse and horizon formation in Quadratic Gravity

Abstract: Quadratic Gravity supplements the Einstein-Hilbert action by terms quadratic in the spacetime curvature. This leads to a rich phase space of static, compact gravitating objects including the Schwarzschild black hole, wormholes, and naked singularities. For the first time, we study the collapse of a spherically symmetric star with uniform dust density in this setting. We assume that the interior geometry respects the symmetries of the matter configuration, i.e., homogeneity and isotropy, thus it is insensitive to the Weyl-squared term and the interior dynamics is fully determined by $R$ and $R^2$. As our main result, we find that the collapse leads to the formation of a horizon, implying that the endpoint of a uniform dust collapse with a homogeneous and isotropic interior is not a horizonless spacetime. We also show that the curvature-squared contribution is responsible for making the collapse into a singularity faster than the standard Oppenheimer-Snyder scenario. Furthermore, the junction conditions connecting spacetime inside and outside the matter distribution are found to be significantly more constraining than their counterparts in General Relativity and we discuss key properties of any exterior solution matching to the spacetime inside the collapsing star. Finally, we comment on the potentially non-generic behavior entailed by our assumptions.