Bibcode
Cardona, O.; Simonneau, E.; Crivellari, L.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 695, Issue 2, pp. 855-864 (2009).
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4
2009
Journal
Citations
8
Refereed citations
8
Description
A new method to obtain the thermodynamic coefficients in an analytic and
exact form for applications in radiative and convective transport in
thermodynamic equilibrium for stellar atmosphere and plasma spectroscopy
is developed. The resulting exact expressions are formed by sums of the
degrees of ionization of the components of the system. Therefore, they
are easy to calculate and are numerically stable. The method is
developed initially for two elements: hydrogen and helium, with constant
partition functions, to show the simplicity of the procedure. The method
is very easy to generalize to any number of elements and for partition
functions dependent on temperature and pressure as well as for the first
negative ions. The thermodynamic coefficients derived are the adiabatic
gradient, the specific heats for constant volume and constant pressure,
the dilatation coefficient, and the velocity of sound in the given
medium. The derivation is based on the perfect gas and Saha ionization
equations. Therefore, the results are valid for the regime where these
equations are valid. These results will be of value to astrophysics in
stellar structure and atmospheres, in geophysics, in planetary
atmospheres, and in plasma physics in spectroscopic analysis and
diagnostics.