Comptonization in ultra-strong magnetic fields: numerical solution to the radiative transfer problem

Abstract

We consider the radiative transfer problem in a plane-parallel slab of thermal electrons in the presence of an overcritical magnetic field. Under such conditions, the magnetic field behaves as a birefringent medium for the propagating photons, and the electromagnetic radiation is split into two polarization modes, ordinary and extraordinary, having different cross-sections. When the optical depth of the slab is large, the ordinary-mode photons are strongly Comptonized and the photon field is dominated by an isotropic component. The radiative transfer problem in strong magnetic fields presents many mathematical issues and analytical or numerical solutions can be obtained only under some given approximations. We investigate this problem both from the analytical and numerical point of view, providing a test of the previous analytical estimates and extending these results introducing numerical techniques. We consider the case of low temperature blackbody photons propagating in a sub-relativistic temperature plasma, which allows us to deal with a semi Fokker-Planck approximation of the radiative transfer equation. We report the numerical solution obtained for eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the space operator, and the emerging Comptonization spectrum of the ordinary-mode photons for any eigenvalue of the space equation and for energies significantly less than the cyclotron energy, which is of the order of MeV for the intensity of the magnetic field here considered. We derived the specific intensity of the ordinary photons, under the approximation of large angle and large optical depth. These assumptions allow the equation to be treated using a diffusion-like approximation.