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Session 5 - Accretion and Outflows in YSOs.
Display session, Wednesday, January 07
Exhibit Hall,
Radiative transfer is a difficult physical problem because all points in a medium are coupled. Analytic solutions are available only for special geometries and special forms of the interaction between matter and radiation. In order to attack a number of problems dealing with complex geometries and interactions we have begun development of a computer code to follow in detail the propagation of photons through arbitrary media. We provide here a description of our algorithms and comparison of the Monte Carlo results with analytic solutions for several test problems. To demonstrate the potential power of our code, we present simulated near-infrared images of accreting protostars with dense protoplanetary disks, a problem receiving current attention in the literature. The code supports an unbounded spatial dynamic range, allows for arbitrarily geometries, and supports complex interactions bewteen matter and radiation. On a 180 MHz desktop CPU it follows about 1000 photons per second, allowing simulations with up to 10^8 photons to be run, resulting in high fidelity simulated images and spectra. Object-oriented coding practices are used throughout, significantly reducing development effort, improving ease of maintenance and facilitating code re-use.
