Dusty radiation-pressure-driven shell

A dusty radiation-pressure-driven shell is swept up when ultraviolet radiation from an active nucleus is absorbed by dust and reradiated in the infrared. Single scattering supplies up to roughly $L/c$ of momentum flux, while trapped infrared photons can enhance it by the infrared optical depth.

The dust transparency radius is where a swept shell's ultraviolet optical depth equals one. For a gas fraction $f_g$ in a singular isothermal sphere, $R_{\tau }={\kappa }_{\mathrm{UV}}{f}_g{\sigma }^2/(2\pi G)$.