Magnetized self-gravitating filament Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-11-05
For a filament formed by collapse perpendicular to a frozen axial field, remains constant. The axial magnetic pressure can then be combined with a quadratic equation of state into an effective polytropic constant.
For an ideal gas of fixed composition, the central temperature satisfies . Keeping fixed therefore requires , rather than keeping the polytropic constant fixed. Substitution in the Lane-Emden equation scalings givesConsequently the homologous polytropes at fixed central temperature obeyThe polytropic index and mean particle mass must be common to this homologous sequence: varying either changes the dimensionless structural coefficient. The fixed-central-temperature assumption is the idealization being used here, rather than a universal property of real stars.