A forth-and-back implicit λ iteration in the solution of radiative transfer in spherical media

Abstract

Forth-and-back implicit ?-iteration has been developed to solve radiative transfer (RT) problems with plane-parallel geometry in which there is a coupling of all RT equations by the scattering term included in the source function (Atanackovic-Vukmanovic, Crivellari and Simonneau 1997). Owing to the implicit representation of the source function in the computation of the mean intensities within a forth-and-back sequential treatment of the two intensities propagating in opposite directions, implicit ?-iteration (ILI) appears to be a very efficient method in the solution of linear as well as non-linear transfer problems. In this paper ILI method is generalized and applied to radiative transfer problems with spherical symmetry. The results for the monochromatic radiative transfer in a spherical atmosphere are presented and compared to those of other authors obtained by the other methods.