A NUMERICAL TREATMENT OF ANISOTROPIC RADIATION FIELDS COUPLED WITH RELATIVISTIC RESISTIVE MAGNETOFLUIDS

Abstract

We develop a numerical scheme for solving fully special relativistic, resistive radiation magnetohydrodynamics. Our code guarantees conservation of total mass, momentum, and energy. The radiation energy density and the radiation flux are consistently updated using the M-1 closure method, which can resolve an anisotropic radiation field, in contrast to the Eddington approximation, as well as the flux-limited diffusion approximation. For the resistive part, we adopt a simple form of Ohm's law. The advection terms are explicitly solved with an approximate Riemann solver, mainly the Harten–Lax–van Leer scheme; the HLLC and HLLD schemes are also solved for some tests. The source terms, which describe the gas–radiation interaction and the magnetic energy dissipation, are implicitly integrated, relaxing the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy condition even in an optically thick regime or a large magnetic Reynolds number regime. Although we need to invert 4 × 4 matrices (for the gas–radiation interaction) and 3 × 3 matrices (for the magnetic energy dissipation) at each grid point for implicit integration, they are obtained analytically without preventing massive parallel computing. We show that our code gives reasonable outcomes in numerical tests for ideal magnetohydrodynamics, propagating radiation, and radiation hydrodynamics. We also applied our resistive code to the relativistic Petschek-type magnetic reconnection, revealing the reduction of the reconnection rate via radiation drag.