Choptuik’s scaling in higher dimensions

We extend Choptuik’s scaling phenomenon found in general relativistic critical gravitational collapse of a massless scalar field to higher dimensions. We find that in the range 4≤D≤11 the behavior is qualitatively similar to that discovered by Choptuik. In each dimension we obtain numerically the universal numbers associated with the critical collapse: the scaling exponent γ and the echoing period Δ. The behavior of these numbers with increasing dimension seems to indicate that γ reaches a maximum and Δ a minimum value around 11≤D≤13. These results and their relation to the black hole–black string system are discussed.