Abstract

A method recently proposed by the authors to study the evolution of discontinuities in radiating spherically symmetric distributions of matter is extended to model "hydrodynamic phase transitions " in a composite radiant sphere. The matter configuration is divided into two regions by a shock wave front, and at each side of this interface a different anisotropic phase is considered. Solutions are matched across the shock via the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions, while the outer region metric joins the Vaidya solution at the boundary surface. The matter distribution is free of singularities within the sphere, and a Gaussian-like radiation pulse is assumed to carry out a fraction of the total mass. The resulting models strongly depend on the anisotropic jump across the interface and on the luminosity (opacity) of the shock wave. Finally, prospective applications to astrophysical scenarios are discussed.

Artículo publicado en: The Astrophysical Journal, 339: 339-353,1989 April 1