TWILIGHT: A Cellular Framework for Three-Dimensional Radiative Transfer
Abstract
We describe a new framework for solving three-dimensional radiative transfer of arbitrary geometries, including a full characterisation of the wavelength-dependent anisotropic scattering, absorption, and thermal reemission of light by dust. By adopting a cellular approach to discretising the light and dust, the problem can be efficiently solved through a fully deterministic iterative process. As a proof of concept we present TWILIGHT, our implementation of the cellular approach, in order to demonstrate and benchmark the new method. TWILIGHT simultaneously renders over one hundred unique images of a given environment with no additional slowdown, enabling a close study of inclination effects of three-dimensional dust geometries. In addition to qualitative rendering tests, TWILIGHT is successfully tested against two Monte-Carlo radiative transfer benchmarks, producing similar brightness profiles at varying inclinations. With the proof-of-concept established, we describe the improvements and current developments underway using the cellular framework, including a technique to resolve the subgrid physics of dust radiative transfer from micron-scale grain models to kiloparsec-sized dust environments.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #225
- Pub Date:
- January 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015AAS...22545106K