Gravitational Collapse of Inhomogenous Perfect Fluid

Abstract

We study the complete gravitational collapse of a class of inhomogeneous perfect fluid models obtained by introducing small radial perturbations in an otherwise homogeneous matter cloud. The key feature that we assume for the perturbation profile is that of a mass profile that is separable in radial and temporal coordinates. The known models of dust and homogeneous perfect fluid collapse can be obtained from this choice of the mass profile as special cases. This choice is very general and physically well motivated and we show that this class of collapse models can lead to the formation of a naked singularity as the final state.