Inverse-square-opacity burning envelope
ID: inverse-square-opacity-burning-envelope
In a thin nondegenerate hydrogen-burning white-dwarf envelope, fix gravity and use , . With opacity and specific heating , set , . Then and , where and . Radiative-zero surface and zero core-flux base conditions give . Thus and , with . At fixed column the specific heating varies as while radiative cooling varies as , giving thin-shell instability in this approximation.
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