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The abstract of Oppenheimer and Volkoff’s paper reads: FEBRUARY 15, 1939 PHYSICAL REVIEW On Massive Neutron Cores J. R. OPPENHEIMER AND G. M. VOLKOFF Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California (Received January 3, 1939) It has been suggested that, when the pressure within stellar matter becomes high enough, a new phase consisting of neutrons will be formed. In this paper we study the gravitational equilibrium of masses of neutrons, using the equation of state for a cold Fermi gas, and general relativity by mages underto Perm one agui run tolution evite, which ie iona imately. For masses 10 <m<10 two solutions exist, one stable and quasi-Newtonian, one more condensed, and unstable. For masses greater than 1O there are no static equilibrium solutions. These results are qualitatively confirmed by comparison with suitably chosen special cases of the analytic solutions recently discovered by Tolman. A discussion of the probable effect of deviations from the Fermi equation of state suggests that actual stellar matter after the exhaustion of thermonuclear sources of energy will, if massive enough, contract indefinitely, although more and more slowly, never reaching true equilibrium.

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The abstract of Oppenheimer and Volkoff’s paper reads: FEBRUARY 15, 1939 PHYSICAL REVIEW On Massive Neutron Cores J. R. OPPENHEIMER AND G. M. VOLKOFF Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California (Received January 3, 1939) It has been suggested that, when the pressure within stellar matter becomes high enough, a new phase consisting of neutrons will be formed. In this paper we study the gravitational equilibrium of masses of neutrons, using the equation of state for a cold Fermi gas, and general relativity by mages underto Perm one agui run tolution evite, which ie iona imately. For masses 10 <m<10 two solutions exist, one stable and quasi-Newtonian, one more condensed, and unstable. For masses greater than 1O there are no static equilibrium solutions. These results are qualitatively confirmed by comparison with suitably chosen special cases of the analytic solutions recently discovered by Tolman. A discussion of the probable effect of deviations from the Fermi equation of state suggests that actual stellar matter after the exhaustion of thermonuclear sources of energy will, if massive enough, contract indefinitely, although more and more slowly, never reaching true equilibrium.
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Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 04-Mar-2024 16:36:19 UTC Robert McNees
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In the late 1930s, Tolman (remember him?) worked on astrophysical and cosmological solutions of Einstein's equations.
A 1939 paper, published alongside an article by Oppenheimer and Volkoff, considered static, spherical distributions of "perfect fluid" like radiation or dust.
An immediate application was modeling stellar structure. Oppenheimer and Volkoff's paper applied Tolman's solutions to a degenerate Fermi gas of neutrons that might exist at the core of a collapsed star.

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