FIRTEZ-dz

A forward and inverse solver of the polarized radiative transfer equation under Zeeman regime in geometrical scale

¹ Leibniz Institut für Sonnenphysik, Schöneckstr. 6, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
e-mail: apy@leibniz-kis.de
² Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, C. Vía Láctea s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
³ Departamento de Astrofísica de Canarias, Universidad de La Laguna, Avda Astrofísico Sánchez s/n, 38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

Received: 13 April 2019
Accepted: 9 July 2019

Abstract

We present a numerical code that solves the forward and inverse problem of the polarized radiative transfer equation in geometrical scale under the Zeeman regime. The code is fully parallelized, making it able to easily handle large observational and simulated datasets. We checked the reliability of the forward and inverse modules through different examples. In particular, we show that even when properly inferring various physical parameters (temperature, magnetic field components, and line-of-sight velocity) in optical depth, their reliability in height-scale depends on the accuracy with which the gas-pressure or density are known. The code is made publicly available as a tool to solve the radiative transfer equation and perform the inverse solution treating each pixel independently. An important feature of this code, that will be exploited in the future, is that working in geometrical-scale allows for the direct calculation of spatial derivatives, which are usually required in order to estimate the gas pressure and/or density via the momentum equation in a three-dimensional volume, in particular the three-dimensional Lorenz force.