Substitute the Killing-flow four-acceleration and stationary pressure into the relativistic Euler equation. It gives
For the equation of state of blackbody radiation, , this becomes . The barotropic hydrostatic first integral therefore gives, on each connected nonvacuum fluid region,
This is the stationary radiation density law. Combining it with the Stefan–Boltzmann law also gives the Tolman–Ehrenfest relation .
At a regular finite free surface, a smooth Killing vector field has finite norm. Hence cannot approach zero there. More globally, its norm has a finite upper bound on a compact regular fluid closure, which bounds the density away from zero whenever . If the timelike norm instead tends to zero, the density diverges. Thus a radiation fluid has no regular free surface: a finite radiation-filled cavity needs a material wall supporting nonzero pressure, rather than an unsupported radiation-vacuum interface.
A connected nonvacuum perfect fluid with equation of state obeys the stationary radiation density law with . On a compact region of a regular spacetime, a smooth Killing vector field has bounded norm. Consequently cannot tend to zero at a finite regular free surface. A vanishing timelike norm instead makes the density diverge. A radiation-filled cavity can have a material wall with nonzero boundary pressure; this is a different boundary condition.