On the importance of partial frequency redistribution in modeling the scattering polarization

Abstract

AbstractIt is well-known that partial frequency redistribution (PRD) is the basic physical mechanism to correctly describe radiative transfer in spectral lines. In the case of polarized line scattering, the PRD becomes particularly important to describe the line-wing polarization, instead of the well-known mechanism of complete redistribution (CRD). Historically, the two-level atom PRD scattering matrices for polarized line scattering were first derived in the 1970's, and later generalized to the case of arbitrary fields in 1997. The latter formulation of the PRD matrices have subsequently been used in the solution of the line transfer equation to successfully model the non-magnetic (resonance scattering) and the magnetic (Hanle scattering) polarization observations. In recent years, using the Kramers-Heisenberg approach, we formulated PRD matrices for various physical mechanisms like quantum interference involving fine- and hyperfine-structure states in a two-term atom. The effect of collisions is included in an approximate way. We have used these PRD matrices to model the observed linear polarization in several interesting lines of the Second Solar Spectrum. In this paper I present a few results which highlight the importance of PRD in the interpretation of the polarized Stokes profiles.