[Previous] | [Session 69] | [Next]
I. Hubeny (NOAO/GSFC), M. van Noort (Univ. of Sydney), T. Lanz (Univ. of Maryland/GSFC)
We present first results of our long-term program whose ultimate goal is to develop multidimensional, self-consistent, non-LTE radiation hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic spectroscopic diagnostics of astronomical objects. As the first step, we have developed an efficient and robust 2-D and 3-D radiation transfer solver, based on the short characteristics method. We assume the source function either to be fully specified (i.e., the so-called formal solution of the transfer equation), or to be given in terms of the equivalent-two-level atom formalism. In the latter case, we have adopted the idea of the Accelerated Lambda Iteration technique to treat iteratively the non-LTE coupling of radiation and matter. We compare the efficiency and numerical accuracy of several variants of the short-characteristics scheme. Finally, we present some illustrative examples of radiative transfer for 2-D and 3-D media with the specified temperature, density, and velocity structure.