Stationary spiral flow in polytropic stellar models.
It is shown that, in addition to the static Emden solution, a self-gravitating polytropic gas has a dynamic option in which there is stationary flow along spiral trajectories wound around the surfaces of concentric tori. The motion is obtained as a solution of a partial differential equation which is satisfied by the meridional stream function, coupled with Poisson's equation and a Bernoulli-type equation for the pressure (density). The pressure is affected by the whole of the Bernoulli term rather than by the centrifugal part only, which acts for a rotating model, and it may be reduced down to zero at the center. The spiral type of flow is illustrated for an incompressible fluid (n = 0), for which an exact solution is obtained. The features of the dynamic constant-density model are discussed as a basis for future comparison with the solution for compressible models.
Department of Applied Mathematics, The Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel.
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Pekeris