Quasihydrostatic flows of radiatively cooling self-gravitating gas clouds

摘要

Two model problems are considered, illustrating the dynamics of quasihydrostatic flows of radiatively cooling, optically thin self-gravitating gas clouds. In the first problem, spherically symmetric flows in an unmagnetized plasma are considered. For a power-law dependence of the radiative loss function on the temperature, a one-parameter family of self-similar solutions is found. The authors concentrate on a constant-mass cloud, one of the cases, when the self-similarity indices are uniquely selected. In this case, the self-similar flow problem can be formally reduced to the classical Lane-Emden equation and therefore solved analytically. The cloud is shown to undergo radiative condensation, if the gas specific heat ratio (gamma) > 4/3. The condensation proceeds either gradually, or in the form of (quasihydrostatic) collapse. For (gamma)