Relativistic Radiative Transfer Using Moment Formalism

Abstract

An analysis of Thome’s (1981) structure equations governing radiation field moments is presented in the case of stationary, spherically symmetric flows. It is shown that the truncated system of moment equations must be solved subject to boundary conditions and a number of critical points equal to the truncation order l _max arises. The moment formalism can be made tractable once a suitable closure assumption for moments of order higher than l _max is introduced. A sample numerical integration of the moment equations is performed for a spherical, accreting flow with an assigned velocity and temperature profile.