[en] Time dependent simulations of a laser driven accelerating shell and ablation layer have shown the presence of long lived quasi-static density and pressure profiles. This paper models the equilibrium solutions for a laser ablation layer both analytically and numerically and develops a detailed understanding of the nature of this flow. Such a model enables the calculation of the quantitative dependence of the shell thickness and acceleration, the peak density, velocity, and temperature of the shell, the width of the Rayleigh-Taylor region, and the distance to the critical surface on the total plasma mass, the critical density, and the absorbed and reflected laser flow