What process characterizes energy transport within the radiative zone surrounding a star's core?

Photons undergo a "random walk" through absorption and re-emission

Immediately surrounding the core in stars like the Sun lies the radiative zone, characterized by extremely dense plasma. In this region, energy, generated as high-energy gamma-ray photons in the core, cannot travel freely. Instead, a photon travels only a very short distance before being absorbed by an atom, only to be re-emitted almost immediately in a completely random direction. This zigzagging path, termed the 'random walk,' means that the net outward movement of energy is incredibly slow. Although the energy generation is instantaneous, the entire process of a single photon traversing the radiative zone can require hundreds of thousands of years before the energy reaches the next layer where physical movement of plasma takes over.