How Black Holes Form in High Energy Collisions

Understand

We elucidate how black holes form in trans-Planckian collisions.

• In the rest frame of one of the incident particles, the gravitational field of the other, which is rapidly moving, looks like a gravitational shock wave.
• The shock wave focuses the target particle down to a much smaller impact parameter.
• In turn, the gravitational field of the target particle captures the projectile when the resultant impact parameter is smaller than its own Schwarzschild radius, forming a black hole.