A 3D radiative transfer framework: X. Arbitrary Velocity Fields in the Co-moving Frame (1210.6679v2)

Abstract: 3-D astrophysical atmospheres will have random velocity fields. We seek to combine the methods we have developed for solving the 1-D problem with arbitrary flows to those that we have developed for solving the fully 3-D relativistic radiative transfer problem in the case of monotonic flows. The methods developed in the case of 3-D atmospheres with monotonic flows, solving the fully relativistic problem along curves defined by an affine parameter, are very flexible and can be extended to the case of arbitrary velocity fields in 3-D. Simultaneously, the techniques we developed for treating the 1-D problem with arbitrary velocity fields are easily adapted to the 3-D problem. The algorithm we present allows the solution of 3-D radiative transfer problems that include arbitrary wavelength couplings. We use a quasi-analytic formal solution of the radiative transfer equation that significantly improves the overall computation speed. We show that the approximate lambda operator developed in previous work gives good convergence, even neglecting wavelength coupling. Ng acceleration also gives good results. We present tests that are of similar resolution to what has been presented using Monte-Carlo techniques, thus our methods will be applicable to problems outside of our test setup. Additional domain decomposition parallelization strategies will be explored in future work.