Abstract

In this work we present for the first time the general solution of the temporal evolution equation arising from the matching of a conformally flat interior to the Vaidya solution. This problem was first articulated by Banerjee et al. (Phys Rev D 40:670, 1989) in which they provided a particular solution of the temporal equation. This simple exact solution has been widely utilised in modeling dissipative collapse with the most notable result being prediction of the avoidance of the horizon as the collapse proceeds. We study the dynamics of dissipative collapse arising from the general solution obtained via the method of symmetries and of the singularity analysis. We show that the end-state of collapse for our model is significantly different from the widely used linear solution.