Can you explain the mechanism of automatic memory management in Java known as the garbage collector?

The Garbage Collector (GC) in Java is an automatic memory management mechanism that frees memory occupied by objects that are no longer used by the program.

When objects are created, they are placed in the heap. If there are no more references to an object from active code, it is considered unreachable and can be removed.

The garbage collector periodically scans the heap, identifies such objects, and frees the memory they occupy, preventing memory leaks and easing the developer's memory management task.

The process roughly looks like this:

1. Objects are created and used.
2. When references to an object are lost, the object becomes a candidate for removal.
3. GC is triggered and cleans up the memory.

This allows developers not to worry about explicitly deleting objects, as in languages with manual memory management.