SimpleX2: radiative transfer on an unstructured, dynamic grid

Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Postbus 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: jppaarde@strw.leidenuniv.nl

Received: 7 December 2009
Accepted: 21 March 2010

Abstract

Context. We present an improved version of the SimpleX method for radiative transfer on an unstructured Delaunay grid. The grid samples the medium through which photons are transported in an optimal way for fast radiative transfer calculations.

Aims. We study the detailed working of SimpleX in test problems and show improvements over the previous version of the method.

Methods. We have applied a direction conserving transport scheme that correctly transports photons in the optically thin regime, a regime where the original SimpleX algorithm lost its accuracy. In addition, a scheme of dynamic grid updates is employed to ensure correct photon transport when the optical depth changes during a simulation. For the application to large data sets, the method is parallellised for distributed memory machines using MPI.

Results. To test the new method, we have performed standard tests for cosmological radiative transfer. We show excellent correspondence with both the analytical solution (when available) and to the results of other codes compared to the former version of SimpleX, without sacrificing the benefits of the high computational speed of the method.