English

An analytic approximation to the isothermal sphere

Astrophysics 2015-06-24 v2

Abstract

We present a useful analytic approximation to the solution of the Lane-Emden equation for infinite polytropic index - the isothermal sphere. The optimized expression obtained for the density profile can be accurate to within 0.04% within 5 core-radii and to 0.1% within 10 core-radii.

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9604084,
  title  = {An analytic approximation to the isothermal sphere},
  author = {Priyamvada Natarajan and Donald Lynden-Bell},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9604084},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

6 pages, figures included, revised version, accepted for publication in MNRAS