A 3D radiative transfer framework

VI. PHOENIX/3D example applications

¹ Hamburger Sternwarte, Gojenbergsweg 112, 21029 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: yeti@hs.uni-hamburg.de
² Homer L. Dodge 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: 5 August 2009
Accepted: 10 November 2009

Abstract

Aims. We demonstrate the application of our 3D radiative transfer framework in the model atmosphere code PHOENIX for a number of spectrum synthesis calculations for very different conditions.

Methods. The 3DRT framework discussed in the previous papers of this series was added to our general-purpose model atmosphere code PHOENIX/1D and an extended 3D version PHOENIX/3D was created. The PHOENIX/3D code is parallelized via the MPI library using a hierarchical domain decomposition and displays very good strong scaling.

Results. We present the results of several test cases for widely different atmosphere conditions and compare the 3D calculations with equivalent 1D models to assess the internal accuracy of the 3D modeling. In addition, we show the results for a number of parameterized 3D structures.

Conclusions. With presently available computational resources it is possible to solve the full 3D radiative transfer (including scattering) problem with the same micro-physics as included in 1D modeling.