Outflows in steep density gradients: diversity of behavior and implications for tidal disruption events and luminous fast blue optical transients
Powerful explosions may undergo sustained energy injection as a central engine launches a wind into the surrounding gas, generating a forward and a reverse shock separated by a contact discontinuity. During the adiabatic phase, the dynamics depend strongly on the wind-to-ambient density ratio $f \equiv \rho_{\rm w} / \rho_{\rm a}$. For $f << 1$, the reverse shock lies well inside the contact discontinuity, and the mechanical energy deposited by the wind is retained in a radially extended, approximately isobaric shocked-wind region whose pressure drives the swept-up ambient shell. For $f \gg 1$, the reverse shock remains close to the contact, and the expansion is governed by the ram-pressure interaction between the freely expanding wind and the swept-up ambient gas. We use analytic scalings and one-dimensional shock-capturing hydrodynamic simulations to determine how outflows in these two limits evolve in ambient density profiles $\rho_{\rm a} \propto r^{-n}$, where $2 \leq n \leq 3$, and whether their shock structures accelerate or coast at constant velocity. For $n > 2$, initially underdense outflows produce accelerating forward shocks whose radii evolve as $R_{\rm s} \propto t^{3/(5-n)}$. Because $\rho_{\rm w} \propto r^{-2}$, f increases with radius, causing the reverse-shocked wind region to contract relative to the contact position as the forward shock transitions toward constant-velocity expansion. This occurs when $f \sim$ a few at $t_{\rm dec} \propto f_0^{1/(2-n)}$, where $f_0$ is the initial wind-to-ambient density ratio. By contrast, outflows initialized with $f_0 \gg 1$ do not develop an extended accelerating phase and remain approximately coasting throughout their adiabatic evolution. We discuss applications to tidal disruption event outflows and luminous fast blue optical transients, whose environments are often inferred to have steep density profiles with $n > 2$.