2007/08/28 by Wolfgang Vieser, W. Vieser, G. Hensler · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Atomic and Molecular Physics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20054187
16 pages, 24 figures, accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysics
openalex publication_date 2007/08/28 · arxiv created 2007/09/05 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Aims.The fate of interstellar clouds embedded in a hot tenuous medium depends on whether the clouds suffer from evaporation or whether material condensates onto the clouds. The knowledge of the evaporation or condensation rates of interstellar clouds at rest is therefore of prime importance for their further evolution. Analytic solutions for the rate of evaporative mass loss from an isolated spherical cloud embedded in a hot tenuous gas are deduced by Cowie & McKee (1977, ApJ, 211, 135). Their approach is limited to the integration of the time-independent energy conservation equation for the heat-conductive interface. Therefore it is crucial to test the validity of the analytical results for more realistic interstellar conditions. This requires that the full hydrodynamical equations must be treated taking the whole cloud into account with a sufficiently large hot-gas reservoir.