2008/12/01 by Duncan Forgan, Duncan H. Forgan, Ken Rice +2 · 3 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Computational physics #Fluid Dynamics Simulations and Interactions #Ionization #Molecular cloud #Opacity #Optics #Physics #Polytropic process #Radiative equilibrium #Radiative transfer #Scattering #Smoothed-particle hydrodynamics #Stars #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.14373.x
11 pages, 22 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2008/12/01 · openalex publication_date 2009/02/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A new means of incorporating radiative transfer into smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is introduced, which builds on the success of two previous methods – the polytropic cooling approximation as devised by Stamatellos et al. and flux-limited diffusion. This hybrid method preserves the strengths of its individual components, while removing the need for atmosphere matching or other boundary conditions to marry optically thick and optically thin regions. The code uses a non-trivial equation of state to calculate temperatures and opacities of SPH particles, which captures the effects of H2 dissociation, H0 ionization, He0 and He+ ionization, ice evaporation, dust sublimation, molecular absorption, bound-free and free–free transitions and electron scattering. The method is tested in several scenarios, including (i) the evolution of a 0.07 M⊙ protoplanetary disc surrounding a 0.5 M⊙ star; (ii) the collapse of a 1 M⊙ protostellar cloud and (iii) the thermal relaxation of temperature fluctuations in a static homogeneous sphere.