FIRTEZ-dz: A Forward and Inverse solver of the polarized Radiative Transfer Equation under Zeeman regime in geometrical scale

TL;DR

FIRTEZ-dz is a computational tool that solves the polarized radiative transfer equation in geometrical scale, enabling accurate analysis of solar magnetic fields and velocities from observational data.

Contribution

The paper introduces a fully parallelized numerical code for forward and inverse polarized radiative transfer in geometrical scale, with validation and potential for 3D magnetic field analysis.

Findings

Code reliably infers physical parameters in optical depth

Accuracy in height-scale depends on gas-pressure knowledge

Working in geometrical scale allows direct spatial derivatives calculation

Abstract

We present a numerical code that solves the forward and inverse problem of the polarized radiative transfer equation in geometrical scale under the Zeeman regime. The code is fully parallelized, making it able to easily handle large observational and simulated datasets. We checked the reliability of the forward and inverse modules through different examples. In particular, we show that even when properly inferring various physical parameters (temperature, magnetic field components, and line-of-sight velocity) in optical depth, their reliability in height-scale depends on the accuracy with which the gas-pressure or density are known. The code is made publicly available as a tool to solve the radiative transfer equation and perform the inverse solution treating each pixel independently. An important feature of this code, that will be exploited in the future, is that working in geometrical-scale allows for the direct calculation of spatial derivatives, which are usually required in order to estimate the gas pressure and/or density via the momentum equation in a three-dimensional volume, in particular the three-dimensional Lorenz force.