Continuous self-similarity breaking in critical collapse - art. no. 084006

This paper studies near-critical evolution of the spherically symmetric sca lar field configurations close to the continuously self-similar solution. U sing analytic perturbative methods, it is shown that a generic growing pert urbation departs from the Roberts solution in a universal way. We argue tha t in the course of its evolution, initial continuous self-similarity of the background is broken into discrete self-similarity with an echoing period Delta = root 2 pi = 4.44, reproducing the symmetries of the critical Choptu ik solution.