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Abstract:We prove the dynamical formation of a marginally outer trapped surface in pure vacuum spacetime from smooth asymptotically flat Cauchy data which initially contain no MOTS. The mechanism is a boundary effect rather than a collapse mechanism. We work in a Cauchy--double-null framework and use Yau's boundary criterion \cite{yau}, which gives the existence of an interior MOTS from a lower bound for the generalized boundary mean curvature relative to the Schoen--Yau radius of the domain. We construct an explicit class of vacuum initial data for which this criterion is strictly subcritical on the initial hypersurface, while the Einstein evolution drives the same domain into the supercritical regime. More precisely, a mild incoming gravitational radiation field increases the generalized boundary mean curvature of an isotropically large interior region sufficiently to force the formation of a MOTS in its future development. A characteristic feature of the initial data is a large interior anisotropic curvature component: the trace-free Ricci curvature is of larger order than the scalar curvature, which is balanced at the vacuum constraint scale. Thus the MOTS forms not from matter concentration or standard gravitational collapse, but from the interaction between boundary geometry, large-scale interior geometry, and the vacuum Einstein dynamics. This gives a rigorous realization of a long-suspected physical idea that apparent horizons may form from global geometric effects in vacuum general relativity.

Submission history

From: Puskar Mondal [view email]
[v1] Wed, 12 Nov 2025 17:46:48 UTC (416 KB)
[v2] Fri, 21 Nov 2025 15:13:57 UTC (413 KB)
[v3] Mon, 9 Feb 2026 13:33:01 UTC (1,780 KB)
[v4] Tue, 17 Feb 2026 20:13:55 UTC (1,782 KB)
[v5] Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:23:16 UTC (2,721 KB)