Mass inflation and curvature divergence near the central singularity in spherical collapse

Abstract: We study spherical scalar collapse toward a black hole formation and examine the asymptotic dynamics near the central singularity of the formed black hole. It is found that, in the vicinity of the singularity, due to the strong backreaction of a scalar field on the geometry, the mass function inflates and the Kretschmann scalar grows faster than in the Schwarzschild geometry. In collapse, the Misner-Sharp mass is a locally conserved quantity, not providing information on the black hole mass that is measured at asymptotically flat regions.