CHOPTUIK SCALING IN NULL COORDINATES

A numerical simulation is performed of the gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric scalar field. The algorithm uses the null initial value formulation of the Einstein-scalar equations, but does not use adaptive mesh refinement. A study is made of the critical phenomena found by Choptuik in this system. In particular it is verified that the critical solution exhibits periodic self-similarity. This work thus provides a simple algorithm that gives verification of the Choptuik results. © 1995 The American Physical Society.