Radiative transfer: Definition from Answers.com

Radiative transfer is the physical phenomenon of energy transfer in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The propagation of radiation through a medium is affected by absorption, emission and scattering processes. The equation of radiative transfer describes these interactions mathematically. Equations of radiative transfer have application in wide variety of subjects including optics, astrophysics, atmospheric science, and remote sensing. Analytic solutions to the radiative transfer equation (RTE) exist for simple cases but for more realistic media with complex multiple scattering effects numerical methods are required.

The present article is largely focused on the condition of radiative equilibrium. ^[1] ^[2].

1 Definitions
2 The equation of radiative transfer
3 Solutions to the equation of radiative transfer
- 3.1 Local thermodynamic equilibrium
- 3.2 The Eddington approximation
4 See also
5 Further reading
6 References

Definitions

The fundamental quantity which describes a field of radiation is the spectral intensity. If we think of a very small area element in the radiation field, there will be radiation energy flowing through that area element. The flow can be completely characterized by the amount of energy flowing per unit time per unit solid angle, the direction of the flow, and the wavelength interval being considered (polarization will be ignored for the moment).

In terms of the spectral intensity, $I ν$ , the energy flowing across an area element of area $da\,$ located at $\mathbf{r}$ in time $dt\,$ in the solid angle $d Ω$ about the direction $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$ in the frequency interval $\nu\,$ to $\nu+d\nu\,$ is

$dE_\nu = I_\nu(\mathbf{r},\hat{\mathbf{n}},t) \cos\theta \ d\nu \, da \, d\Omega \, dt$

where $θ$ is the angle that the unit direction vector $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$ makes with a normal to the area element. The units of the spectral intensity are seen to be energy/time/area/solid angle/frequency. In MKS units this would be W·m^-2·sr^-1·Hz^-1 (watts per square-metre-steradian-hertz).

The equation of radiative transfer

The equation of radiative transfer simply says that as a beam of radiation travels, it loses energy to absorption, gains energy by emission, and redistributes energy by scattering. The differential form of the equation for radiative transfer is:

$\frac{1}{c}\frac{\partial}{\partial t}I_\nu + \hat{\Omega} \cdot \nabla I_\nu + (k_{\nu, s}+k_{\nu, a}) I_\nu = j_\nu + \frac{1}{4\pi c}k_{\nu, s} \int_\Omega I_\nu d\Omega$

where $j ν$ is the emission coefficient, $k ν, s$ is the scattering cross section, and $k ν, a$ is the absorption cross section.

Solutions to the equation of radiative transfer

Solutions to the equation of radiative transfer form an enormous body of work. The differences however, are essentially due to the various forms for the emission and absorption coefficients. If scattering is ignored, then a general solution in terms of the emission and absorption coefficients may be written:

$I_\nu(s)=I_\nu(s_0)e^{-\tau(s_0,s)}+\int_{s_0}^s j_\nu(s') e^{-\tau(s',s)}\,ds'$

where $τ(s 1, s 2)$ is the optical depth of the atmosphere between $s 1$ and $s 2$ :

$\tau(s_1,s_2) \ \stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}\ \int_{s_1}^{s_2} \alpha_\nu(s)\,ds$

Local thermodynamic equilibrium

A particularly useful simplification of the equation of radiative transfer occurs under the conditions of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). In this situation, the atmosphere consists of massive particles which are in equilibrium with each other, and therefore have a definable temperature. The radiation field is not, however in equilibrium and is being entirely driven by the presence of the massive particles. For an atmosphere in LTE, the emission coefficient and absorption coefficient are functions of temperature and density only, and are related by:

$\frac{j_\nu}{\alpha_\nu}=B_\nu(T)$

where $B ν (T)$ is the black body intensity at temperature T. The solution to the equation of radiative transfer is then:

$I_\nu(s)=I_\nu(s_0)e^{-\tau(s_0,s)}+\int_{s_0}^s B_\nu(T(s'))\alpha_\nu(s') e^{-\tau(s',s)}\,ds'$

Knowing the temperature profile and the density profile of the atmospheric components will be enough to calculate a solution to the equation of radiative transfer.

The Eddington approximation

The Eddington approximation is a special case of the two stream approximation. It can be used to obtain the intensity in a plane-parallel atmosphere with isotropic frequency-independent scattering. It assumes that the intensity is a linear function of $μ = cosθ$ . i.e.

I ν (μ, z) = a (z) + μ b (z)

where $z$ is the normal direction to the slab atmosphere. Note that expressing angular integrals in terms of $μ$ simplifies things because $d μ = - sinθ d θ$ appears in the Jacobian of integrals in spherical coordinates.

Extracting the first few moments of the intensity with respect to $μ$ yields

$J_\nu=\frac{1}{2}\int^1_{-1}I_\nu d\mu = a$

$H_\nu=\frac{1}{2}\int^1_{-1}\mu I_\nu d\mu = \frac{b}{3}$

$K_\nu=\frac{1}{2}\int^1_{-1}\mu^2 I_\nu d\mu = \frac{a}{3}$

Thus the Eddington approximation is equivalent to setting $K ν = 1 / 3 J ν$ . Higher order versions of the Eddington approximation also exist, and consist of more complicated linear relations of the intensity moments. This extra equation can be used as a closure relation for the truncated system of moments.

Note that the first two moments have simple physical meanings. $J ν$ is the isotropic intensity at a point, and $H ν$ is the flux through that point in the $z$ direction.

The radiative transfer through an isotropically scattering atmosphere at local thermal equilibrium is given by

$\mu \frac{dI_\nu}{dz}=- \alpha_\nu (I_\nu-B_\nu) + \sigma_{\nu}(J_\nu -I_\nu)$

Integrating over all angles yields

$\frac{dH_\nu}{dz}=\alpha_\nu (B_\nu-J_\nu)$

Premultiplying by $μ$ , and then integrating over all angles gives

$\frac{dK_\nu}{dz}=-(\alpha_\nu+\sigma_\nu)H_\nu$

Substituting in the closure relation, and differentiating with respect to $z$ allows the two above equations to be combined to form the radiative diffusion equation

$\frac{d^2J_\nu}{dz^2}=3\alpha_\nu(\alpha_\nu+\sigma_\nu)(J_\nu-B_\nu)$

This equation shows how the effective optical depth in scattering-dominated systems may be significantly different from that given by the scattering opacity if the absorptive opacity is small.

References

^ S. Chandrasekhar (1960). Radiative Transfer. Dover Publications Inc.. p. 393. ISBN 0-486-60590-6.
^ Jacqueline Lenoble (1985). Radiative Transfer in Scattering and Absorbing Atmospheres: Standard Computational Procedures. A. Deepak Publishing. p. 583. ISBN 0-12-451451-0.

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