Gravitational Collapse of Massless Fields in an Expanding Universe

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. The initial data is constructed 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. The difference of the late time expansion law of the lattice universe depending on the final fate of the gravitational collapse is discussed.