Stellar Evolution: White Dwarfs

With emphasis on Chandrasekhar’s Limit and the

Lane–Emden equation

Dissertation

Submitted to the University of Madras

in partial fulfilment of the requirements for

the award of the Degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE
in
PHYSICS

By

C R ADITYA NARAYAN
REG. NO. 34411007

DEPARTMENT OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS

SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL SCIENCES
UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS
MARAIMALAI CAMPUS (GUINDY)
CHENNAI - 600 025
MAY 2013
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (19 Oct. 1910 – 21 Aug. 1995),
without whom white dwarfs knew no limit.
IMAGE COURTESY: AIP
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 White Dwarfs – Fascinating Stellar Remnants . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.1 Dynamic Equilibrium in Stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Electron Degeneracy and its Manifest Pressure . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 White Dwarf Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Chandrasekhar’s Limit 5
2.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Finding the Chandrasekhar’s Limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3 The Lane–Emden equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3.1 Derivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Solving Lane–Emden Equation using C Programming 8

3.1 The Code and Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1.1 Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.1.2 Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4 Final Calculations and Arriving at the Limit 10

4.1 Non-Relativistic Approximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2 Ultra-Relativistic Approximation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.3 Fermi–Dirac Ultra-Relativistic Approximation . . . . . . . . 11

5 Conclusion 12

6 Bibliography 14

A Appendix 15
A.1 The C Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
A.2 Typical Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the Head of the Department of Nuclear Physics,
University of Madras, Dr. V Ravichandran, for giving me the opportu-
nity to do my project and for inspiring me to do the project in Astrophysics.

I would also like to thank my guides Dr. V Devanathan and Dr. C

Venkateswaran who were instrumental in shaping my project and guid-
ing me throughout. Without their guidance, I would not have crossed the
hurdles I faced during my project in this challenging field.

I would like to give a special mention to Dave Gentile, whose paper,

published on White Dwarfs greatly aided my understanding on these awe-
inspiring celestial objects.

I would also like to thank all those who have directly and indirectly helped
me in my project, including the Departmental staff without whom, I would
have not been able to complete my project. Their help is most indispens-
able.
Abstract
The calculation of the values used to find the Chandrasekhar’s limit
has been simplified, to a small degree, by using a C program to solve
the second order differential Lane–Emden equation which describes the
nature of polytropic fluids (like Solar Plasma). The limit was obtained by
further introducing Eddington’s Approximation derived from Fermi–Dirac
Statistics.
1 Introduction
White dwarfs are overwhelmingly interesting objects that linger in the
sky, as solitary balls of under-luminous matter, or as part of binary star
systems, either insignificant in comparison to their parent stars or part of
a system that consists of dwarfs of comparable size. One couldn’t possibly
explain something as complex as a white dwarf in a project spanning a pe-
riod of just three months! That would have been incredible if not outright
impossible. I say this with an air of confidence, or should I say outlandish
arrogance, for the fact that white dwarfs are not only mind-boggling in their
Physics but also are very difficult to spot in the sky, given their poor lumi-
nosity.

Here, I will be giving a concise introduction of what a white dwarf re-

ally is, along with their characteristics and the Physics behind how they
form. However, the main focus or crux of my project rests with a very in-
teresting Limit that defines a white dwarf – the Chandrasekhar’s Limit.
The value of the limit is Mlimit = 1.44M . Where M is the Mass
of the Sun or 1 Solar Mass which is equal to a whopping 1.989 × 1030
kg! To make my project more meaningful and interesting at the same
time, I will be using C Programming to produce a computational pro-
gram that will help me calculate the parameters required to find the limit.
These parameters will be obtained by solving the second order differ-
ential equations – the Lane–Emden equations through the C program.
I will sufficiently explain all the terms I have used above such that there are
no creeping doubts left in the mind about how exactly the equations arose.

Figure 1: Sirius A (the larger star) and Sirius B (the small pinprick on
the lower left), part of a binary star system of a revolutionary period of 50
years, 8.6 light years away from Earth. IMAGE COURTESY: NASA/ESA

1
1.1 White Dwarfs – Fascinating Stellar Remnants
White dwarfs, at one point, had been mistaken to be stars themselves,
but in reality, they aren’t stars, they are just their remnants. The term
’white dwarf’ was given by Willem Luyten. White dwarfs were thought
to initially be luminous in nature, i.e., they were thought to have sources
that produced their photo-thermal energy, but it was later found out us-
ing surface spectral analysis, that they did not contain nuclear matter or
the sufficient temperatures to sustain thermonuclear fusion that is said to
be central to a star’s heat and light energy. This unusual faintness was
recognised by three astronomers in 1910 – Henry Norris Russell, Edward
Charles Pickering, and Williamina Fleming. They are the most common
stellar remnant type, usually formed at the end of a star’s lifetime whose
mass is not sufficient enough to form a heavier neutron star or a black hole.
It is thought to be the end state in the stellar evolution of over 95 percent
of the stars present in the Milky Way Galaxy, including our very own Sun.
But, the process of a star from birth to death, as you know, takes billions
of years, so there is no cause for worry yet. We will not die with our star,
atleast, in this lifetime.

1.1.1 Dynamic Equilibrium in Stars

As I said previously, white dwarfs do not have nuclear fuel to pro-
duce their own heat and light, but, this also means that they cannot pro-
duce the required outward gas pressure to create the hydrostatic equilib-
rium that is essential to maintain equilibrium. Let me explain. Stars
like our sun are in a constant state of dynamic equilibrium that involves
a delicate balance of outward gas pressure produced by the flux of ther-
mal energy emitted during nuclear fusion, and the inward gravitational
pressure that pulls the star’s matter towards its centre. When a main-
sequence star (stars that are in the pink of their health, i.e., stars that
are in the phase where they produce the most thermal energy with ad-
equate nuclear fuel) approaches its end, after millions of years of shin-
ing, the nuclear fuel is completely spent. This causes an absence of the
outward gas pressure. Hence the star collapses under tremendous gravi-
tational pressure causing the core of the star to become super dense. It
is seen that stars with the mass of around 4M or below only end their
lives in the white dwarf stage. This is because their masses are sufficient
only to produce white dwarfs that conform to the Chandrasekhar’s Limit.

This final phase of a star’s lifetime is called the red-giant phase.

The outer layers expand, causing the star to swell abnormally (more than
three times its original size) and are finally ejected due to the thermal insta-
bilities caused on the surface of the red giant and creates a beautiful, celes-
tial, diffuse pattern of stellar material known as a planetary nebula, leaving
behind the hot, dense and electron-degenerately stable white dwarf star. We
will now look into the particulars of electron degeneracy and electron de-
generacy pressure to convincingly explain the stability of the white dwarf
in the absence of a balancing outward pressure. It is this very phenomenon
that intrigued many scientists till the 1930’s where a host of scientists, most
notable of whom was Chadrasekhar, used the principles of statistical me-
chanics to explain how such super dense, fuel-less objects can ever be stable.

2
Figure 2: This is an artist’s impression of the Stellar Evolution for a star
like our Sun, over an entire lifetime. Notice the three distinct phases (from
left to right): Main Sequence, Red-Giant and finally the white dwarf at the
centre of a planetary nebula. IMAGE COURTESY: European Southern
Observatory (ESO)

Figure 3: The Helix nebula in the constellation Aquarius, around 700 light
years away, is one of the prime examples of a planetary nebula around
a planetary nebular nucleus (PNN) which is destined to become a white
dwarf star. IMAGE COURTESY: NASA/ESA/C.R. O’Dell (Vanderbilt
University)

3
1.2 Electron Degeneracy and its Manifest Pressure
The Pauli’s exclusion principle (from Fermi–Dirac Statistics) does not
allow two particles (in this case, fermions) of half-integral spin to occupy
the same quantum state. The emergent repulsive force manifests itself
in the form of electron degeneracy pressure. Hence it becomes more and
more difficult to squeeze more particles into smaller volumes. This is anal-
ogous to quantum degeneracy pressure which was discovered by Freeman
Dyson to be responsible for the increased imperviousness of solid matter as
when compared to other matter states, rather than the electrostatic force
of repulsion. It was further deduced that the internal orbital structure of
elemental matter was due to this very same electron degeneracy pressure.
In the case of white dwarfs, this electron degeneracy pressure equalises the
inward gravitational force to create a stable, under-luminous, thermally
heated object. There is no involvement of external gas pressure as the
white dwarf is a core remnant of a star, and the stability is entirely due to
the degeneracy.
As mentioned before, the star is subject to a extremely high inward
pressure during the end of the Red-Giant phase. At such pressures, the
electrons come very close to each other and Pauli’s exclusion principle dic-
tates them to have different energies. To add another electron to the same
given volume, there is some external energy which is required to raise the
electron’s energy level. This is electron degeneracy pressure. Thus an equi-

Figure 4: Diagrammatic representation of electron degeneracy pressure

governed by Pauli’s exclusion principle. IMAGE COURTESY: Michael
Richmond

librium state is created, and the white dwarf remains stable, continuing
to shine with the remaining stored thermal energy, until, millions of years
later, the light emitted will no longer be significant and the white dwarf
will become a black dwarf.

4
1.3 White Dwarf Characteristics
White dwarfs are quite amazing when it comes to figures describing
them. White dwarfs have small diameters, more comparable to planets
than stars themselves. They can vary from anything as small as 1000 miles
to 19,000 miles which is comparable to the size of the Earth. Although
they are governed by the Chandrasekhar’s limit, they mostly vary in size
from 0.5M – 0.7M . White dwarfs are under-luminous by nature as they
posess no light source of their own, and emit the last remaining storage
of thermal energy. They range in magnitude of brightness from 9.0–16, 16
being lower. The faintest of white dwarfs can be 100,000 times fainter than
the Sun which has a magnitude of −26.7. Their temperatures are found
in the range from 5,000 Kelvin to 70,000 Kelvin depending upon their size
and age. They are initially observed of a higher color temperature, before
gradually moving to the lower end of the color spectrum (which defines the
temperatures of stars), when they poise become black dwarfs. Considering
that no black dwarfs have been found or thought to exist, the white dwarfs
seen today are one of the oldest and are said to be the remains of one of
the first stars born in the Universe (white dwarfs are stellar remnants and
stars that end as white dwarfs live on an average of above ten billion years.
Their densities are very high owing to the nature of compressive forces
that formed them. Sirius B (Figure 1), one of the most extensively studied
white dwarfs has a density of 125,000 gm/cm3 . The densest white dwarf
may be 10,000 times more than this – so much so that one tablespoon
of white dwarf matter will weigh in an excess of five tons! This is also
one of the reasons why there is a clear broadening of spectral lines during
spectral analysis owing to the high surface gravity of the white dwarf due
to its high density and mass. Only quantum and statistical mechanics can
explain such high densities.

2 Chandrasekhar’s Limit
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was an Indian-American astrophysicist
who predicted that there existed a mass limit under which white dwarfs
would remain stable. This is consequently, the limit above which electron
degeneracy will collapse, gravitation takes over, causing further contraction
after which neutron degeneracy comes to play, allowing the formation of
neutron stars or ultimately, black holes (after neutron degeneracy fails too
in stars over 10M ). In 1931, he correctly factored in the condition that the
relativistic electron would no longer be able to sustain the inward crushing
gravitational pressure beyond the limit value of 1.44M or 2.864 × 1030 kg.

2.1 Background
Chandrasekhar was inspired by Sir Eddington’s papers on stellar dy-
namics and theory of stability in the Internal Constitution of Stars pub-
lished in 1926, when he was just 18 years of age. It was from this book that
Chandrasekhar learnt the theories on stellar constitution and equilibrium
in 1928, when he was a part of Presidency College, in erstwhile Madras.
After learning of the just discovered Compton Effect, he published paper
in 1928 titled Thermodynamics of the Compton Effect with reference to the
Internal Structure of stars. And further, after meeting Arnold Sommer-
feld who visited Madras at that time, he learnt the then new Fermi–Dirac

5
statistics and applied it to the Compton Scattering, publishing yet another
paper through R.H. Fowler in the Royal Society of Physics in 1929. Over
the next ten years, Chandrasekhar extensively researched on various as-
pects of stellar structure and evolution summarised in his book titled An
Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure published in 1939. However
his theories on the Chandrasekhar’s limit, also published in the same book,
were summarily rejected by many sections of the scientific society, includ-
ing initially, by Sir Eddington himself. These however came to define the
theory of stellar evolution and it was a long time before Chandrasekhar’s
contribution was formally recognised in international circles.

2.2 Finding the Chandrasekhar’s Limit

Our main objective is to arrive at the Chandrasekhar’s limit using
suitable computational techniques to generate the required values critical
to the limit and the equations that precede it. A suitable C program us-
ing simple algorithm is written to extract the generated solutions of the
Lane–Emden equation, which is a second-order differential equation relat-
ing the radius of the star with the density. These extracted solutions are
suitably converted into a graph using pre-existing software, from which we
can obtain the desired values of the equation, which we will ultimately use
to calculate the limit. The reason I have chosen C programming language
is because it is simpler in syntax and can be used to lessen the amount of
coding and create an efficient and concise program that will help us obtain
the solutions much easier.

2.3 The Lane–Emden equation

The Lane–Emden equation is the dimensionless form of the Poisson’s
equation and is used to describe a Newtonian, self-gravitating, spherically
symmetric, polytropic fluid. It was named after the two astrophysicists
who discovered them – Jonathan Homer Lane and Robert Emden. It is
given by: !
1 d 2 dθ
ξ + θn = 0
ξ 2 dξ dξ

where ξ is the dimensionless radius and θ is the dimensionless density func-

tion.

2.3.1 Derivation
To find the equation, we start with the equation of continuity in stars
(equation for mass gradient) given by,

dM (r)
= 4πr2 ρ(r) (1)
dr
The gravitational force produced inside the star (by considering a spheri-
cal shell of radius r, thickness dr and mass M (r)) can be equated to the
pressure difference times the surface area of the shell, which supports the
shell, causing the hydrostatic equilibrium we earlier saw:

M (r)G
4πr2 ρ(r)dr = −4πr2 dP (2)
r2

6
This gives us the pressure gradient inside the star:
dP M (r)G
=− ρ(r) (3)
dr r2
This can be re-written as,
r2 dP
M (r) = − (4)
ρ(r)G dr
Substituting (4) in (1), we get,
!
d rr dP
− = 4πr2 ρ(r) (5)
dr ρ(r)G dr
Now we just re-arrange (5) to get
r2 dP
!
1 d
= −4πGρ(r) (6)
r2 dr ρ(r) dr
This gives us the radius–density relation that involves pressure. Now, we
introduce the equation for polytropic fluids P = Kργ relating the pressure
to the density in (6), to bring out a general equation for pressure and
density in the polytropic form (keep in mind from here on ρ(r) is depicted
as just ρ):
1 d r2 γ
!
γ−1 dρ
Kρ = −4πGρ (7)
r2 dr ρ dr

This is the second order differential equation for density. We must ap-
ply two simple boundary conditions ρ = ρc , the central density at r = 0
and ρ = 0 at r = R, on the surface of the star. First, putting γ − 1 = 1/n
in (7) we get,
1 d r2 K(n + 1) 1/n dρ
!
ρ = −4πGρ (8)
r2 dr ρn dr
Here we must do a small yet crucial substitution that will help us com-
pletely non-dimensionalise the above equation and parametrise it to make
our calculations unit-less and easier to solve:

ρ = ρc θn (9)

Using (9) in (8),

r2 K(n + 1)
!
1 d d
(ρc θ)(1−n)/n ρc θn = −4πGρc θn (10)
r2 dr n dr
Pulling out all the constants and noting that,
d n dθ
θ = nθ(n−1) (11)
dr dr
Equation (10) becomes,
!
n+1 1 d dθ
Kρc (1/n)−1 2 r2 = −θn (12)
4πG r dr dr
We are coming to the Poisson form of the Lane–Emden equation before
which we must make two last assumptions:
s
n+1

α= Kρc (1/n)−1 (13)
4πG

7
and
r = αξ (14)
Substituting (13) and (14) in (12), we get the Lane–Emden equations,
!
1 d 2 dθ
ξ = −θn (15)
ξ 2 dξ dξ

3 Solving Lane–Emden Equation using C Pro-

gramming
We now have the Lane–Emden equation which we have derived con-
vincingly using the method of non-dimensionalisation. The challenge is
now to correctly translate this equation into a program that will produce
the solutions of the equation for various values of the polytropic index n.
The trick lies in simplifying the C program so as to not tangle itself in a
knot of confusing loops and nested loops! I have converted the second order
differential equation to two first order differential equations by making a
suitable variable substitution. Here, we establish a new set of boundary
conditions. We can say that the central density θ = 1 when ξ = 0, and
furthermore dθdξ
= 0 when ξ = 0. Here, we need to find the values of θ(ξ)
∀ θ = 0 for different polytropic indexes n. The values of the x intercepts
(from the graph of the solutions) are labelled as ξ1 for different values of
n. The algorithm that I use in the C program is by assuming a new vari-
able to render the Lane–Emden equation in first order differential form. In
equation (15) we take
dθ
φ = ξ2 (16)
dξ
Taking inverse,
dθ φ
= 2 (17)
dξ ξ
Now, when we substitute (16) in (15), we get,
dφ
= −ξ 2 θn (18)
dξ
This gives us two first order differential equations:
φ
∆θ = 2 ∆ξ (19)
ξ
∆φ = −ξ 2 θn (20)

3.1 The Code and Inference

The above first order differential equations can easily be integrated using
a suitable C program (See Appendix A) with the following loop code

theta = theta + dxi ∗ (phi/(xi ∗ xi))

phi = phi − dxi ∗ (xi ∗ xi ∗ pow(theta, n))
We are only concerned with the limits θ > −0.3 and ξ < 10.0 because,
we can obtain the necessary intercepts of (θ, ξ) for θ = 0, at the surface of
the star, within that range. With the intercept values it is easy to find the
mass M and the radius R of the star in terms of the central density and
then to find the Chandrasekhar’s limit.

8
3.1.1 Graph
The graph we obtain is as below:

Figure 5: The Lane–Emden Equation Graphical Solution

3.1.2 Solutions
From the graph we can obtain the particular values needed to illustrate
the solutions. We can see that only values upto n = 5 are taken and not
higher than that. This is because, for n > 5, the solutions produce an
asymptotic curve that doesn’t intercept the x-axis (one would notice that
for n = 0 too, there is no x intercept, but it was observed that there was a
minor rendering error in the program—the other solutions are intact). The
solutions we are particular about are for the relativistic and non-relativistic
cases (as proposed by Sir Eddington called Eddington’s Approximation).
5 3 0
γ = , n = , ξ1 = 3.65375(not shown), ξ12 |θ (ξ1 )| = 2.71406 (21)
3 2
4 0
γ = , n = 3, ξ1 = 6.89685, ξ12 |θ (ξ1 )| = 2.01824 (22)
3
0
I will illustrate the purpose of finding ξ12 |θ (ξ1 )|. With these values, we
can establish a relationship between mass M and radius R, in terms of the
central density of the star ρc .

9
4 Final Calculations and Arriving at the Limit
From equation (1) we get the integral form
ZR
M= 4πr2 ρc θn dr (23)
0

Putting r = αξ in the above equation we get,

Zξ1
3
M = 4πρc α ξ 2 θn dξ (24)
0

Using the Lane–Emden equation, we get,

Zξ1 !
3 d dθ
M = −4πρc α ξ2 dξ (25)
dξ dξ
0

Integrating we obtain,
0
M = 4πρc α3 ξ12 |θ (ξ1 )| (26)

4.1 Non-Relativistic Approximation

From equation (13), we can approximate the non-relativistic case governed
by (21) and infer,
α = ρc−1/6 × constants (27)
and using equation (26) and subsequently (14), we get,

M = ρ1/2
c × constants (28)

R = ρ−1/6
c × constants (29)
and hence we deduce,

M = R−3 × constants (30)

This gives us an important result – the mass of the star is inversely pro-
portional to the volume of the star, hence adding mass, will shrink the
volume of the star. Hence, as I said before in the sub-section on electron
degeneracy, the more the mass, the lesser the space available for electrons
to move about and because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, de-
crease in space decreases the uncertainty in position ∆x, but increases the
uncertainty in momentum ∆px . Eventually, the particles will approach the
speed of light and relativistic conditions come into force.

4.2 Ultra-Relativistic Approximation

Hence it is only appropriate to consider the ultra-relativistic approximation
where from (22),
α = ρc−1/3 × constants (31)
and from (26)
 3
M = R−3 × constants (32)
This gives a good result, implying that the radius is more sensitive to
fluctuations in the mass of the polytropic object and at a critical mass, the

10
radius becomes zero, unless there are internal forces (degeneracy pressure)
0
that help balance it out. Hence we use the value of ξ12 |θ (ξ1 )| from (22) in
(26), we get,
M = 4πρc α3 × 2.01824 (33)
and finally substituting the value of α from equation (13) calculated after
using n = 3, we get,
3/2
K

M = 4π × 2.01824 × (34)
πG

4.3 Fermi–Dirac Ultra-Relativistic Approximation

The value of K is determined by the Fermi–Dirac equation and calculation
of energy density, and subsequently pressure assumed to be equal to a
momentum flux, and the rest mass density.
1Z dΠ
P = pv 3 3 d3 p (35)
3 d xd p
g Z
P = 3 p̄ν̄f (p)dp̄ (36)
h
Putting g = 2, using the condition f (E) ≈ (1, E ≤ EF ) and f (E) ≈
(0, E > EF ) and integrating, we get,
2πc 4
P = p (37)
3h3 F
where pF is the Fermi momentum.
If mB is the mean Baryon mass and Ye , the mean number of electrons
per baryon, and ne the number density, we get an expression for ρ, density,
which is equal to ne mB /Ye (where ne = 8π/3h3 (p3f )). Now that we have
got seperate equations for pressure and density, we can relate them using
P = Kργ , the polytropic equation to get the value of K for ultra-relativistic
case as,
3 1/3 Ye 4/3 c
   
K=h (38)
8π mB 4
Ye = 1/2 for stars which have matter upto Helium, and using the known
values in K:
mB = 1.66057 × 10−24 gm
c = 2.99792458 × 108 km/s
G = 6.670 × 10−8 dynes cm2 /gm2
h = 6.626 × 10−34 erg secs
M = 1.989 × 1033 gms we get the Chandrasekhar’s limit,

Mlimit = 1.44M (39)

The polytropic equation of state, the non-relativistic and ultra-relativistic

approximations of K were all used by Chandrasekhar in his path-breaking
discovery.
There were successive corrections added for electrostatic effects and
inverse beta decay and the limit was fine-tuned further.

11
5 Conclusion
The calculation for Chandrasekhar’s limit was perhaps the most sensational
discovery in the field of astrophysics in the 1930’s. It was not accepted by
many scientists at that point of time because it was thought to be over-
sensational to the point that it would confirm the existence of black holes,
about which very little was known. I have, to a small degree, simplified the
calculation of the values used to find the Chandrasekhar’s limit, using a C
program and obtained the limit by introducing Eddington’s approximation
which was included in Chandrasekhar’s original paper published in 1930.

As part of future work, a probable direction would be to continue to study

on how the limit is affected by certain approximations and error corrections
involving electrostatic and decay effects and whether the same can be ap-
plied to heavier and denser bodies such as neutron stars (stabilised by neu-
tron degeneracy pressure) and black holes (defined by the Schwarzschild’s
radius).

12
Hubble Space telescope wide-field view of white dwarfs in the Milky Way
galaxy. IMAGE COURTESY: NASA, H.Richer (University of British
Columbia)

13
6 Bibliography
1. On Stars, Their evolution and Their Stability, Nobel Prize Lecture
by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, 8 December 1983

2. WikipediaTM and all references therein.

3. Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis, Sean G. Ryan, Andrew J. Nor-

ton, Cambridge
c University Press

4. Paper on White Dwarfs by Dave Gentile, for the working methodol-

ogy in my project

5. Stars: Their Structure and Evolution by G. Srinivasan, J. Astrophys.

Astr. (1996) 17, 53–76

14
A Appendix
A.1 The C Program
The code I used to obtain corresponding values of θ for different values
of ξ uses the loop code that is given above. The initial difficulties faced
was common to that of any C program on the MS-DOS framework – the
values of the program could not be extracted unless one were to use the
FILE pointer and the fprintf statement to type in and save the large set of
values in sequence in the .txt file format, to be ready for use by the plotting
software. The program is given thus:
#include<s t d i o . h>
#include<c o n i o . h>
#include<math . h>
int main ( )
{
double n ;
double d x i = 0 . 1 ;
double t h e t a= 1 . 0 ;
double p h i = 0 . 0 ;
double x i= 0 . 0 ;
double var [ 2 ] [ 4 0 0 ] ;
double v a l [ 2 ] [ 4 0 0 ] ;
int a = 0 ;
int b = 0 ;
FILE ∗ f i l e ;
clrscr () ;
loop : ;
p r i n t f ( ”Type t h e p o l y t r o p i c i n d e x ’ n ’ \ n\n” ) ;
s c a n f ( ”%l f ” , &n ) ;
i f ( n>5)
{
p r i n t f ( ” \nThe p o l y t r o p i c i n d e x you have e n t e r e d e x c e e d s t h e
s t a r ’ s l i m i t . Try a g a i n ! \ n\n” ) ;
goto l o o p ;
}
f i l e = f o p e n ( ”C: \ \ LERes15 . t x t ” , ”w” ) ;
if ( file )
{
here : ;
while ( t h e t a > −0.3 && x i < 1 0 )
{
i f ( x i ==0.0)
{
p h i= p h i + 0 . 0 ;
t h e t a= t h e t a + 0 . 0 ;
}
else
{
theta = theta + dxi ∗ ( phi / ( xi ∗ xi ) ) ;
p h i = p h i − d x i ∗ ( x i ∗ x i ∗ pow ( t h e t a , n ) ) ;
var [ a ] [ b]= t h e t a ;
v a l [ a ] [ b]= x i ;
f p r i n t f ( f i l e , ”\n %f \ t %f \n” , var [ a ] [ b ] , v a l [ a ] [ b ] ) ;
b++;
}
xi = xi + dxi ;
a++;
i f ( t h e t a >−0.3 | | xi <10)
{
goto t h e r e ;
}

15
else
{
goto c l o s e ;
}
}
there : ;
goto h e r e ;
close : ;
fclose ( file ) ;
}
exit () ;
}

A.2 Typical Solution

The code generates a solution set that looks like this (for n = 3):

1.000000 0.100000
0.997500 0.200000
0.991978 0.300000
0.983381 0.400000
0.971792 0.500000
0.957372 0.600000
0.940330 0.700000
0.920917 0.800000
0.899407 0.900000
0.876091 1.000000
0.851264 1.100000
0.825219 1.200000
0.798238 1.300000
0.770589 1.400000
0.742517 1.500000
0.714247 1.600000
0.685977 1.700000
0.657882 1.800000
0.630110 1.900000
0.602789 2.000000
0.576021 2.100000
0.549890 2.200000
0.524460 2.300000
0.499780 2.400000
0.475885 2.500000
0.452796 2.600000
0.430525 2.700000
0.409074 2.800000
0.388439 2.900000
0.368609 3.000000
0.349569 3.100000
0.331299 3.200000
0.313778 3.300000
0.296982 3.400000
0.280884 3.500000
0.265458 3.600000
0.250678 3.700000

16
0.236517 3.800000
0.222947 3.900000
0.209941 4.000000
0.197474 4.100000
0.185520 4.200000
0.174055 4.300000
0.163055 4.400000
0.152496 4.500000
0.142358 4.600000
0.132619 4.700000
0.123260 4.800000
0.114260 4.900000
0.105602 5.000000
0.097270 5.100000
0.089246 5.200000
0.081515 5.300000
0.074062 5.400000
0.066874 5.500000
0.059938 5.600000
0.053240 5.700000
0.046771 5.800000
0.040517 5.900000
0.034470 6.000000
0.028619 6.100000
0.022955 6.200000
0.017470 6.300000
0.012154 6.400000
0.007000 6.500000
0.002002 6.600000
-0.002848 6.700000
-0.007557 6.800000
-0.012130 6.900000
-0.016574 7.000000
-0.020893 7.100000
-0.025093 7.200000
-0.029178 7.300000
-0.033154 7.400000
-0.040792 7.600000
-0.044462 7.700000
-0.048038 7.800000
-0.051523 7.900000
-0.054920 8.000000
-0.058232 8.100000
-0.061462 8.200000
-0.064612 8.300000
-0.067685 8.400000
-0.070683 8.500000
-0.073609 8.600000
-0.076463 8.700000
-0.079249 8.800000
-0.081967 8.900000
-0.084621 9.000000
-0.087210 9.100000

17
 -0.089737 9.200000
-0.092202 9.300000
-0.094608 9.400000
-0.096955 9.500000
-0.099244 9.600000

The solutions are then imported into the plotting software (here I used
Origin software)
c and the graph is plotted.

18