Monte Carlo radiative transfer with explicit absorption to simulate absorption, scattering, and stimulated emission

TL;DR

This paper introduces an explicit absorption technique for Monte Carlo radiative transfer that efficiently handles net stimulated emission, improving accuracy and performance in complex 3D simulations.

Contribution

The authors develop and implement an explicit absorption method that enables Monte Carlo radiative transfer to accurately simulate net stimulated emission in 3D geometries.

Findings

The method accurately reproduces analytical solutions in two-stream problems.

Implementation in SKIRT integrates seamlessly with existing variance reduction techniques.

Explicit absorption improves efficiency in regimes of net absorption.

Abstract

Context: The Monte Carlo method is probably the most widely used approach to solve the radiative transfer problem, especially in a general 3D geometry. The physical processes of emission, absorption, and scattering are easily incorporated in the Monte Carlo framework. Net stimulated emission, or absorption with a negative cross section, does not fit this method, however. Aims: We explore alterations to the standard photon packet life cycle in Monte Carlo radiative transfer that allow the treatment of net stimulated emission without loss of generality or efficiency. Methods: We present the explicit absorption technique that allows net stimulated emission to be handled efficiently. It uses the scattering rather than the extinction optical depth along a photon packet's path to randomly select the next interaction location, and offers a separate, deterministic treatment of absorption. We implemented the technique in a special-purpose Monte Carlo code for a two-stream 1D radiative transfer problem and in the fully featured 3D code SKIRT, and we studied its overall performance using quantitative statistical tests. Results: Our special-purpose code is capable of recovering the analytical solutions to the two-stream problem in all regimes, including the one of strong net stimulated emission. The implementation in SKIRT is straightforward, as the explicit absorption technique easily combines with the variance reduction and acceleration techniques already incorporated. In general, explicit absorption tends to improve the efficiency of the Monte Carlo routine in the regime of net absorption. Conclusions: Explicit absorption allows the treatment of net stimulated emission in Monte Carlo radiative transfer, it interfaces smoothly with... (abridged)