Radiation pressure calculation

Current calculation

​Here I'm attempting to add the effects of ablation (more energy is absorbed by the layers being blown off than is required to unbind them), as well as the nonzero width of the bound torus (the gas at the inner edge of the torus will be more tightly bound than the gas at the orbital distance).

See ​these ​movies for some physical intuition. Note the steady state reached by the first - I've approximated this as two nested parabolas for the calculation.

Other approaches

Ruth's 2009 paper shows that radiation pressure alone would be insufficient to produce the mass loss rate determined by observations. Since this calculation is concerned primarily with ablation of the planet itself, and assumes a priori that radiation pressure can accelerate planetary hydrogen to the orbital velocity, I'm not sure it's relevant to our current situation.

Shaikhislamov et al. used the reconstructed Lyman- flux of ~1014 phot/cm2/s to calculate the pressure applied to the planetary wind: barye, which is about 2 orders of magnitude less than the pressure from their stellar wind (so they argue it's appropriate to neglect). Our torus is supported by a thermal pressure of ~8x10-7 barye, and a ram pressure (in the x direction) of ~10-11 barye (so insignificant compared to the thermal pressure).

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