White Dwarf Stars as Polytropic Gas Spheres
Abstract
We expect that relativistic effects play an important role in compact stars because their electrons are highly degenerate. In this paper, we study the properties of condensed matter in white dwarfs using Newtonian and relativistic polytropic fluid spheres. We propose two polytropic indices (n = 3 and n = 1.5) to investigate the physical characteristics of the models. We numerically solve the Lane-Emden equations and demonstrate that the relativistic effect is small in white dwarf stars.
- Publication:
-
Astrophysics
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s10511-016-9456-3
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1406.1482
- Bibcode:
- 2016Ap.....59..540N
- Keywords:
-
- Compact stars;
- White dwarfs;
- Polytropes;
- Relativistic effects;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 5 figures, 1 table. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:astro-ph/0004317 by other authors