Stellar envelopes with supercritical luminosity

Abstract

The analytical solutions are obtained for static envelopes at radiative equilibrium for power dependence of opacity on the temperature. The existence of an exact boundary is shown to lie between the regions of static radiative envelopes and stationary outflowing envelopes for which the asymptotic numerical solutions are found It is shown that convection makes the static envelope region broader and leads to the existence, for the same parameters, of outflowing and static convective envelopes — i.e., to double-valued solution. The approximate method is indicated for the definition of the boundary of the beginning of the outflow. It is pointed out that our results are, on the whole, applicable to the real cases of the dependence of opacity on the temperature and density.