Mean gas opacity for circumstellar environments and equilibrium temperature degeneracy^⋆

¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: malygin@mpia.de
² Fellow of the International Max-Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics at the University of Heidelberg (IMPRS-HD)  
³ Universität Tübingen, Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik, Auf der Morgenstelle 10, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
⁴ Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik, Albert-Ueberle-Straße 2, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

Received: 6 March 2014
Accepted: 19 May 2014

Abstract

Context. In a molecular cloud dust opacity typically dominates over gas opacity, yet in the vicinities of forming stars dust is depleted, and gas is the sole provider of opacity. In the optically thin circumstellar environments the radiation temperature cannot be assumed to be equal to the gas temperature, hence the two-temperature Planck means are necessary to calculate the radiative equilibrium.

Aims. By using the two-temperature mean opacity one does obtain the proper equilibrium gas temperature in a circumstellar environment, which is in a chemical equilibrium. A careful consideration of a radiative transfer problem reveals that the equilibrium temperature solution can be degenerate in an optically thin gaseous environment.

Methods. We compute mean gas opacities based on the publicly available code DFSYNTHE by Kurucz and Castelli. We performed the calculations assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium and an ideal gas equation of state. The values were derived by direct integration of the high-resolution opacity spectrum.

Results. We produced two sets of gas opacity tables: Rosseland means and two-temperature Planck means. For three metallicities [Me/H] = 0.0, ± 0.3 we covered the parameter range 3.48 ≤ log T_rad [K] ≤ 4.48 in radiation temperature, 2.8 ≤ log T_gas [K] ≤ 6.0 in gas temperature, and −10 ≤ log P [dyn cm^-2] ≤ 6 in gas pressure. We show that in the optically thin circumstellar environment for a given stellar radiation field and local gas density there are several equilibrium gas temperatures possible.

Conclusions. We conclude that, in general, equilibrium gas temperature cannot be determined without treating the temperature evolution.