Radiative Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities

We perform analytic linear stability analyses of an interface separating two stratified media threaded by a radiation flux, a configuration relevant in several astrophysical contexts. We develop a general framework for analyzing such systems and obtain exact stability conditions in several limiting cases. In the optically thin, isothermal regime, where the discontinuity is chemical in nature (e.g., at the boundary of a radiation pressure-driven H II region), radiation acts as part of an effective gravitational field, and instability arises if the effective gravity per unit volume toward the interface overcomes that away from it. In the optically thick "adiabatic" regime where the total (gas plus radiation) specific entropy of a Lagrangian fluid element is conserved, for example at the edge of radiation pressure-driven bubble around a young massive star, we show that radiation acts like a modified equation of state and derive a generalized version of the classical Rayleigh-Taylor stability condition.