Quantum vacuum effects on the final fate of a collapsing ball of dust

Understand

We consider the quantum vacuum effects of the massless scalar fields that are non-minimally coupled to the background geometry of a collapsing homogeneous ball of dust.

• It is shown that for a definite range of coupling constants, there are repulsive quantum vacuum effects, capable of stopping the collapse process inside the black hole and precluding the formation of singularity.
• The final fate of the collapse will be a black hole with no singularity, inside which the matter stays balanced.
• The density of the final static matter will be close to the Planck density.