Hans Moritz Günther edited figures/P_ext/caption.tex  almost 10 years ago

Commit id: 73964c7ead2f669e4ab9662d1511d4d18b13444f

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Solutions to the ODE for different exponential pressure profiles. In the top row the scale height $h$ of the exponential is varied with all other parameters held fixed; the bottom row uses the same values for $h$, but also scales $P_0\propto h^{-1.5}$.  The four panels show imporant variables for each solution.   \emph{leftmost panel}: Profile of the external pressure $P(z)$.   \emph{middle left panel}: Position of the shock front. Note that the two axes in this panel are to use the same  scale. The unshocked stellar wind region is much longer in $z$ direction (height above the disk) than it is wide. \emph{middle right panel}: Pre-shock velocity $v_0$ measured perperdicular to the shock front.   \emph{rightmost panel}: Distribution of post-shock temperatures, weighted by spherically integrated mass flux. This distribution is dominated by the temperature (which in turn is set by $v_0$) at small values of $z$, since the shock surface is close to the central object and covers a large solid angle of the stellar wind and therefore a large fraction of the total mass flux. Note that this panel does not show an emission measure distribution of all observed plasma; it only shows which fraction of the mass is heated to what temperature in the shock. It does not account for the fact that this plasma will eventually cool and contribute emission at cooler temperatures; a simulation of the thermodynamics of the cooling plasma is beyond the scope of this article.