RH 1.5D: a massively parallel code for multi-level radiative transfer with partial frequency redistribution and Zeeman polarisation

Abstract

The emergence of three-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of stellar atmospheres has sparked a need for efficient radiative transfer codes to calculate detailed synthetic spectra. We present RH 1.5D, a massively parallel code based on the RH code and capable of performing Zeeman polarised multi-level non-local thermodynamical equilibrium (NLTE) calculations with partial frequency redistribution for an arbitrary amount of chemical species. The code calculates spectra from 3D, 2D or 1D atmospheric models on a column-by-column basis (or 1.5D). While the 1.5D approximation breaks down in the cores of very strong lines in an inhomogeneous environment, it is nevertheless suitable for a large range of scenarios and allows for faster convergence with finer control over the iteration of each simulation column. The code scales well to at least tens of thousands of CPU cores, and is publicly available. In the present work we briefly describe its inner workings, strategies for convergence optimisation, its parallelism, and some possible applications.