On the Occurrence of Naked Singularity in Spherically Symmetric Gravitational Collapse

Generalizing earlier results of Joshi and Dwivedi (Commun. Math. Phys. 146, 333 (1992); Lett. Math. Phys. 27, 235 (1993)), we analyze here the spherically symmetric gravitational collapse of a matter cloud with a general form of matter for the formation of a naked singularity. It is shown that this is related basically to the choice of initial data to the Einstein field equations, and would therefore occur in generic situations from regular initial data within the general context considered here, subject to the matter satisfying the weak energy condition. The condition on initial data which leads to the formation of black hole is also characterized.