Critical Collapse of Skyrmions

We study first order phase transitions in the gravitational collapse of spherically symmetric skyrmions. Static sphaleron solutions are shown to play the role of critical solutions separating black-hole spacetimes from no-black-hole spacetimes. In particular, we find a new type of first order phase transition where subcritical data do not disperse but evolve towards a static regular stable solution. We also demonstrate explicitly that the near-critical solutions depart from the intermediate asymptotic regime along the unstable manifold of the critical solution.