Frequency-dependent Discrete Implicit Monte-Carlo Scheme for the Radiative Transfer Equation

TL;DR

This paper extends the discrete implicit Monte-Carlo method to frequency-dependent radiative transfer, achieving teleportation-free and smooth results comparable to IMC but without its numerical issues.

Contribution

It introduces a frequency-dependent generalization of the DIMC algorithm, improving accuracy and removing teleportation artifacts in radiative transfer simulations.

Findings

The new algorithm produces teleportation-free results.

It yields smooth results with noise levels similar to IMC.

Validated on one and two-dimensional benchmarks.

Abstract

This work generalizes the discrete implicit Monte-Carlo (DIMC) method for modeling the radiative transfer equation from a gray treatment to an frequency-dependent one. The classic implicit Monte-Carlo (IMC) algorithm, that has been used for several decades, suffers from a well-known numerical problem, called teleportation, where the photons might propagate faster than the exact solution due to the finite size of the spatial and temporal resolution. The Semi-analog Monte-Carlo algorithm proposed the use of two kinds of particles, photons and material particles that are born when a photon is absorbed. The material particle can `propagate' only by transforming into a photon, due to black-body emission. While this algorithm produces a teleportation-free result, it is noisier results compared to IMC due to the discrete nature of the absorption-emission process. In a previous work [Steinberg and Heizler, ApJS, 258:14 (2022)], proposed a gray version of DIMC, that makes use of two kinds of particles, and therefore has teleportation-free results, but also uses the continuous absorption algorithm of IMC, yielding smoother results. This work is a direct frequency-dependent (energy-dependent) generalization of the DIMC algorithm. We find in several one and two dimensional benchmarks, that the new frequency-dependent DIMC algorithm yields teleportation-free results on one hand, and smooth results with IMC-like noise level.