Dust Radiative Transfer - Codes and Benchmarks

Workshop IPAG du 09 au 11 octobre 2013

For many astronomical objects, the radiation carrying most of the information is heavily processed before it hits our telescopes. Cosmic dust particles are especially efficient in altering radiation due to absorption, scattering, and re-emission. Consequently, radiative transfer (RT) modeling of spectra and images is one of the basic standard technique of astrophysical research. Moreover, RT is an important physical process to transport energy and momentum, often controlling the energy balance of the object, or altering its appearance by radiation pressure.

Unfortunately, the solution of the dust RT problems is still one of the outstanding challenges in computational astrophysics due to its high dimensionality and the underlying integro-differential transport equation.

The workshops will be the largest assembly of coders worldwide dealing with this non-linear and non-local problem. It aims to discuss the state-of-the-art in dust RT coding, how benchmarks can test the codes, and what future perspectives are promising.

The workshop aims to address the following topics : Solution methods, resolution and grids, error control, acceleration, boundary conditions, thermal equilibrium and non-equilibrium, heating mechanisms, sublimation border, opacities, connection to other codes, fitting data, distributed codes, time-dependence.

RT13 is organized by Jürgen Steinacker, Karl Gordon, and Maarten Baes.

More information on the meeting webpage.