Gravitational collapse of a massless scalar field in a periodic box

Gravitational collapse of a massless scalar field with the periodic boundary condition in a cubic box is reported. This system can be regarded as a lattice universe model. We construct the initial data for a Gaussian-like profile of the scalar field taking the integrability condition associated with the periodic boundary condition into account. For a large initial amplitude, a black hole is formed after a certain period of time. While the scalar field spreads out in the whole region for a small initial amplitude. It is shown that the expansion law in a late time approaches that of the radiation dominated universe and the matter dominated universe for the small and large initial amplitude cases, respectively. For the large initial amplitude case, the horizon is initially a past outer trapping horizon, whose area decreases with time, and after a certain period of time, it turns to a future outer trapping horizon with the increasing area. (paper)