Gravitational collapse in a constant potential bath - art. no. 044010

We analyze here the gravitational collapse of directed null radiation in a background with a constant potential such as the one produced by a star sys tem such as a galaxy in which the collapsing object is immersed. Both naked singularities and black holes are shown to be developing as the final outc ome of the collapse. An interesting feature that emerges is that a part of the naked singularity spectrum in the collapsing Vaidya region gets covered in the corresponding dual-Vaidya region, which corresponds to the Vaidya d irected null radiation sitting in a constant potential bath. The implicatio ns of such a result towards the issue of stability of naked singularities a re discussed.