Physical Processes in Naked Singularity Formation

Gravitational collapse is one of the most fruitful subjects in gravitationalphysics. It is well known that singularity formation is inevitable in completegravitational collapse. It was conjectured that such a singularity should behidden by horizons if it is formed from generic initial data with physicallyreasonable matter fields. Many possible counterexamples to this conjecture havebeen proposed over the past three decades, although none of them has proved tobe sufficiently generic. In these examples, there appears a singularity that isnot hidden by horizons. This singularity is called a `naked singularity.' Theappearance of a naked singularity represents the formation of an observablehigh-curvature, strong-gravity region. In this paper we review examples ofnaked singularity formation and recent progress in research of observablephysical processes - gravitational radiation and quantum particle creation -from a forming naked singularity.Comment: 76 pages, 25 figure file