Computation of Radiative Transfer
Computation of Radiative Transfer
The equation of radiative transfer describes the propagation of radiation and the effects of emission, absorption, and scattering through a medium. This Demonstration shows the simple case of an initial intensity through a volume of gas with no scattering, constant opacity, gas density, and source function intensity. The differential equation is solved and the intensity as a result of the radiative transfer through the gas volume is computed as a function of optical depth. The intensity approaches the source function intensity for optically thick cases () and the initial intensity of the background source for optically thin cases ().
I
ν
S
0
τ≫1
I
0
τ≪1