Scale invariant stellar structure

Abstract

In scale invariant hydrostatic barotropes, the radial evolutionary equation linearly relates the local gravitational and internal energies. From this first-order equation, directly follow all the properties of polytropes and the important mass-radius relation. Quadrature then leads to the regular Lane-Emden functions and their Picard and Pade approximations, which are useful wherever stars are approximately or exactly polytropic. We illustrate this particularly for the n=3 regular polytrope and obtain analytic approximations to the solution of the Lane-Emden equation, valid over the bulk of relativistic degenerate stars (massive white dwarfs) and chemically homogeneous stars in radiative equilibrium (ZAMS stars).