Upwind monotonic interpolation methods for the solution of the time dependent radiative transfer equation

Abstract

We describe the use of upwind monotonic interpolation methods for the solution of the time-dependent radiative transfer equation in both optically thin and thick media. These methods, originally developed to solve Eulerian advection problems in hydrodynamics, have the ability to propagate sharp features in the flow with very little numerical diffusion. We consider the implementation of both explicit and implicit versions of the method. The explicit version is able to keep radiation fronts resolved to only a few zones wide when higher order interpolation methods are used. Although traditional implementations of the implicit version suffer from large numerical diffusion, we describe an implicit method which considerably reduces this diffusion.