With negligible heavy-element contribution to the mean molecular weight, and . At fixed mass, composition-dependent CNO homology gives and . The Stefan–Boltzmann law then gives . From the formal reference, declining initially increases luminosity and effective temperature, unlike the usual redward main-sequence turn-off. A trace CNO catalyst abundance is implicit in the burning coefficient; an exactly metal-free pure-hydrogen star cannot burn through that cycle.
Use stellar homology: dimensionless density, temperature and luminosity profiles are taken to have the same shape, so the dimensional scale relations follow from the structure equations. Mass conservation and hydrostatic support give
The ideal gas equation then gives , with the dimensional constants held fixed. The specific stellar energy-generation rate has the prescribed hydrogen factor and temperature exponent, so
Independently, radiative diffusion in a star gives , hence
Equating the nuclear supply and radiative transport establishes composition-dependent CNO homology:
At one fixed composition, these reduce to and as required.
The Stefan–Boltzmann law gives , so . Thus the logarithmic Hertzsprung-Russell diagram slope along this zero-age main sequence is
Increasing mass moves upward and leftward on the conventional diagram, whose temperature axis is reversed.
For composition changes, neglect the small heavy-element contribution to the mean molecular weight and set . Then . The fixed trace catalyst abundance is absorbed into ; this is not an assertion that an exactly metal-free star can undergo CNO burning. Substitution into the homology laws gives
For a retained, nonnegligible fixed metallicity , the corresponding mean-molecular-weight factor is instead. The displayed requested formula uses the trace-metal approximation.
At fixed mass, differentiating with respect to at the formal reference gives
Consequently
and the initial fully mixed hydrogen-burning evolutionary track has slope
Hydrogen depletion has , so both luminosity and effective temperature initially increase. The star therefore moves upward and leftward, on a shallower logarithmic track than the mass sequence. The figure uses dimensionless luminosity and temperature relative to its initial reference star; the track is computed for declining at constant mass.
Figure 1.
Zero-age radiative homology sequence and the fixed-mass fully mixed hydrogen-burning track
. Details.
Ordinary cluster main-sequence turn-offs instead evolve toward brighter, cooler, more extended configurations and eventually the giant region. Normal stars are therefore not mixed throughout their entire mass during hydrogen burning: the core composition changes while the envelope retains hydrogen, and composition and entropy gradients develop. Core exhaustion and subsequent shell burning then produce very different structural evolution. Complete mixing is a special evolutionary scenario, not the standard explanation of ordinary giant formation.
These hydrogen-burning scalings must not be extrapolated literally to . Their vanishing nuclear coefficient would make the inferred radius tend to zero and the effective temperature singular; in reality hydrogen exhaustion requires a different structural and energy-generation model. A homogeneous remnant may be helium-rich, but its later structure is not described by the same CNO law. Also, the cover-sheet radiation-pressure expression has a temperature-power typo: the physical term is . Radiation pressure was neglected in this derivation, so that typo does not enter the calculation.