A 3D radiative transfer framework

IV. Spherical and cylindrical coordinate systems

¹ Hamburger Sternwarte, Gojenbergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: yeti@hs.uni-hamburg.de
² Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Oklahoma, 440 W. Brooks, Rm 100, Norman, OK 73019, USA e-mail: baron@ou.edu
³ Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, MS 50F-1650, 1 Cyclotron Rd, Berkeley, CA 94720-8139, USA

Received: 14 January 2009
Accepted: 8 March 2009

Abstract

Aims. We extend our framework for 3D radiative transfer calculations with a non-local operator splitting methods along (full) characteristics to spherical and cylindrical coordinate systems. These coordinate systems are better suited to a number of physical problems than Cartesian coordinates.

Methods. The scattering problem for line transfer is solved via means of an operator splitting (OS) technique. The formal solution is based on a full characteristics method. The approximate Λ operator is constructed considering nearest neighbors exactly. The code is parallelized over both wavelength and solid angle using the MPI library.

Results. We present the results of several test cases with different values of the thermalization parameter for the different coordinate systems. The results are directly compared to 1D plane parallel tests. The 3D results agree very well with the well-tested 1D calculations.

Conclusions. Advances in modern computers will make realistic 3D radiative transfer calculations possible in the near future.