Collapsing shells of radiation in anti-de Sitter spacetimes and the hoop and cosmic censorship conjectures - art. no. 044020

Gravitational collapse of radiation in an anti-de Sitter background is stud ied. For the spherical case, the collapse proceeds in much the same way as in the Minkowski background, i.e., massless naked singularities may form fo r a highly inhomogeneous collapse, violating the cosmic censorship, but not the hoop conjecture. The toroidal, cylindrical and planar collapses can be treated together. In these cases no naked singularity ever forms, in accor dance with the cosmic censorship. However, since the collapse proceeds to f orm toroidal, cylindrical or planar black holes, the hoop conjecture in an anti-de Sitter spacetime is violated. [S0556-2821(99)06602-3].