Kasner-like description of spacelike singularities in spherically symmetric spacetimes with scalar matter

Abstract We study the properties of spacelike singularities in spherically symmetric spacetimes obeying the Einstein equations, in the presence of matter. We consider in particular matter described by a scalar field, both in the presence of an electromagnetic field and without. We prove that if a spacelike singularity obeying several reasonable assumptions is formed, then the Hawking mass, the Kretschmann scalar, and the matter fields have inverse polynomial blow-up rates near the singularity that may be described precisely. Furthermore, one may view the resulting spacetime in the context of the BKL heuristics regarding spacelike singularities in relativistic cosmology. In particular, near any point p on the singular boundary in our spherically symmetric spacetime, we obtain a leading order BKL-type expansion, including a description of Kasner exponents associated to p. This provides a rigorous description of a detailed correspondence between Kasner-like singularities most often associated to the cosmological setting, and the singularities observed in (spherically symmetric) gravitational collapse. Moreover, we outline a program concerning the study of the stability and instability of spacelike singularities in the latter picture, both outside of spherical symmetry and within (where the electromagnetic field acts as a proxy for angular momentum) – in particular we signify the importance of cosmological phenomena including subcritical regimes and Kasner bounces in the collapse setting.