SSC/Stability/NeutralMode

Radial Pulsation Neutral Mode

Drawing from an accompanying discussion, we have the following:

Polytropic LAWE (linear adiabatic wave equation)

	$0=\frac{d^{2}x}{d{\xi }^2}+[4-(n+1)Q]\frac{1}{\xi }\cdot \frac{dx}{d\xi }+(n+1)\left[\right(\frac{{\sigma }_c^2}{6{\gamma }_g})\frac{{\xi }^2}{\theta }-\alpha Q]\frac{x}{{\xi }^2}$
where:    $Q(\xi )\equiv -\frac{d\ln \theta }{d\ln \xi },$    ${\sigma }_c^2\equiv \frac{3{\omega }^2}{2\pi G{\rho }_c},$     and,     $\alpha \equiv (3-\frac{4}{{\gamma }_{\mathrm{g}}})$

All physically reasonable solutions are subject to the inner boundary condition,

$\frac{dx}{d\xi }=0$         at         $\xi =0,$

but the relevant outer boundary condition depends on whether the underlying equilibrium configuration is isolated (surface pressure is zero), or whether it is a "pressure-truncated" configuration. As is the case with the pressure-truncated isothermal spheres, discussed above, if the polytropic configuration is truncated by the pressure, $P_e$, of a hot, tenuous external medium, then the solution to the LAWE is subject to the outer boundary condition,

$-\frac{d\ln x}{d\ln \xi }=3$         at         $\xi =\tilde{\xi }.$

But, for isolated polytropes — see the supporting derivation, below — the sought-after solution is subject to the more conventional boundary condition,

$-\frac{d\ln x}{d\ln \xi }=\left(\frac{3-n}{n+1}\right)+\frac{n{\sigma }_c^2}{6(n+1)}\left[\frac{\xi }{{\theta }^{\text{'}}}\right]$         at         $\xi ={\xi }_{\mathrm{s}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{f}}.$

See Also