# Paradigmatic examples for testing models of optical light polarization by spheroidal dust

## TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer framework to model and test the polarization effects caused by spheroidal dust grains in astrophysical environments, including scattering, dichroic extinction, and birefringence.

## Contribution

It introduces a new methodology for implementing polarization modeling of spheroidal dust in radiative transfer codes, validated by analytical benchmarks.

## Key findings

- MCpol code achieves 0.1% accuracy in polarization simulations.
- The framework effectively models polarization changes due to scattering, extinction, and birefringence.
- Benchmark tests confirm the numerical precision of the implementation.

## Abstract

We present a general framework on how the polarization of radiation due to scattering, dichroic extinction, and birefringence of aligned spheroidal dust grains can be implemented and tested in 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer (MCRT) codes. We derive a methodology for solving the radiative transfer equation governing the changes of the Stokes parameters in dust-enshrouded objects. We utilize the M\"uller matrix, and the extinction, scattering, linear, and circular polarization cross sections of spheroidal grains as well as electrons. An established MCRT code is used and its capabilities are extended to include the Stokes formalism. We compute changes in the polarization state of the light by scattering, dichroic extinction, and birefringence on spheroidal grains. The dependency of the optical depth and the albedo on the polarization is treated. The implementation of scattering by spheroidal grains both for random walk steps as well as for directed scattering (peel-off) are described. The observable polarization of radiation of the objects is determined through an angle binning method for photon packages leaving the model space as well as through an inverse ray-tracing routine for the generation of images. We present paradigmatic examples for which we derive analytical solutions of the optical light polarization by spheroidal dust particles. These tests are suited for benchmark verification of MCpol and other such codes, and allow to quantify the numerical precision reached. We demonstrate that MCpol is in excellent agreement to within 0.1% of the Stokes parameters when compared to the analytical solutions.