The evolution of collapsing protostars of 0.05, 1 and 20M⊙ is studied with computations which include radiative as well as convective energy flow, which has been entirely neglected in previous papers I and II. It is found that, when a shock wave which has been generated at the center reaches the outermost layers, the protostars flare up suddenly. The protostar of 1M⊙ increases its luminosity from 5 ×10-4L⊙ to a peak value 6 ×103L⊙ in a period of the order of 10 days. This peak value depends scarcely on the initial conditions. After the flare-up, a convective region grows inwards from the surface and the luminosity is kept at 1 ×103L⊙ by convection until the star finally reaches a stage of wholly gravitational equilibtium. The luminosity at this stage is found to be very sensitive to the stellar mass, being 8L⊙ and 5 ×104L⊙ for the protostars of 0.05 and 20M⊙. respectively. These computed values of the luminosity are high enough to cover the observations of infrared objects.
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Narita et al. (1970) studied this question.