MA Emilio Schmidt/Lothars Notes

Pressure Truncation

While it's true that space is not vacuum, in which sense and to what degree is it more accurate to ignore all mass beyond \(R_\text{max}\) (being defined via \(\rho(R_\text{max})=\rho_\text{background}\)) instead of letting the density vanish continuously and thus ignoring less of the mass? Is the background pressure (or density) supposed to have an effect or is it just a means to an end, namely to define a finite \(R_\text{max}\)?