Repulsive regions in Lemaître–Tolman–Bondi gravitational collapse

We show that in the inhomogeneous Lemaître–Tolman–Bondi space–time there are specific regions in which repulsive gravity exists. To find these regions, we use an invariant definition of repulsive gravity based upon the behavior of the curvature eigenvalues. In addition, we analyze the effects of repulsive gravity on the dynamics of the gravitational collapse. In particular, we investigate the collapse in the case of the parabolic solution for the effective scale factor of the Lemaître–Tolman–Bondi metric, corresponding to the marginally bound case. Exploring the corresponding cut-offs at which gravity becomes repulsive, we notice that black holes with dominant repulsive effects are not excluded a priori. Indeed, we demonstrate that the collapse leads, in general, to the formation of a central naked singularity; however, for particular values of the free parameters entering the model, black holes with dominant repulsive gravity can exist. We show that the expected physical process is not modified as the marginally bound condition is dropped out. Moreover, we show that this is true independently of the hypothesis that the energy–momentum tensor is built up in terms of pressureless matter. Further, we demonstrate that geodesic deviations can depend on the sign of the curvature eigenvalues. Finally, we give an astrophysical interpretation of black holes with dominant repulsive gravity. Indeed, we argue that compact objects with dominant repulsive gravity could be interpreted as progenitors of Gamma Ray Bursts.