Effects of Thermal Emission on Chandrasekhar's Semi-infinite Diffuse Reflection Problem

Abstract

Abstract The analytical results of Chandrasekhar's semi-infinite diffuse reflection problem is crucial in the context of the stellar or planetary atmosphere. However, the atmospheric emission effect was not taken into account in this model, and the solutions are applicable only for a diffusely scattering atmosphere in the absence of emission. We extend the model of the semi-infinite diffuse reflection problem by including the effects of thermal emission B(T), and present how this affects Chandrasekhar's analytical end results. Hence, we aim to generalize Chandrasekhar’s model to provide a complete picture of this problem. We use Invariance Principle Method to find the radiative transfer equation accurate for diffuse reflection in the presence of B(T). Then we derive the modified scattering function S(μ, ϕ; μ 0, ϕ 0) for different kinds of phase functions. We find that the scattering function S(μ, ϕ; μ 0, ϕ 0) as well as the diffusely reflected specific intensity I(0, μ; μ 0) for different phase functions are modified due to the emission B ( T ) from layer τ = 0. In both cases, B ( T ) is added to the results of the only scattering case derived by Chandrasekhar, with some multiplicative factors. Thus the diffusely reflected spectra will be enriched and carry the temperature information of the τ = 0 layer. As the effects are additive in nature, hence our model reduces to the sub-case of Chandrasekhar's scattering model in the case of B ( T ) = 0. We conclude that our generalized model provides more accurate results due to the inclusion of the thermal emission effect in Chandrasekhar's semi-infinite atmosphere problem.