49,549 research outputs found
PORTA: A three-dimensional multilevel radiative transfer code for modeling the intensity and polarization of spectral lines with massively parallel computers
The interpretation of the intensity and polarization of the spectral line
radiation produced in the atmosphere of the Sun and of other stars requires
solving a radiative transfer problem that can be very complex, especially when
the main interest lies in modeling the spectral line polarization produced by
scattering processes and the Hanle and Zeeman effects. One of the difficulties
is that the plasma of a stellar atmosphere can be highly inhomogeneous and
dynamic, which implies the need to solve the non-equilibrium problem of the
generation and transfer of polarized radiation in realistic three-dimensional
(3D) stellar atmospheric models. Here we present PORTA, an efficient multilevel
radiative transfer code we have developed for the simulation of the spectral
line polarization caused by scattering processes and the Hanle and Zeeman
effects in 3D models of stellar atmospheres. The numerical method of solution
is based on the non-linear multigrid iterative method and on a novel
short-characteristics formal solver of the Stokes-vector transfer equation
which uses monotonic B\'ezier interpolation. Therefore, with PORTA the
computing time needed to obtain at each spatial grid point the self-consistent
values of the atomic density matrix (which quantifies the excitation state of
the atomic system) scales linearly with the total number of grid points.
Another crucial feature of PORTA is its parallelization strategy, which allows
us to speed up the numerical solution of complicated 3D problems by several
orders of magnitude with respect to sequential radiative transfer approaches,
given its excellent linear scaling with the number of available processors. The
PORTA code can also be conveniently applied to solve the simpler 3D radiative
transfer problem of unpolarized radiation in multilevel systems.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures, to appear in Astronomy and Astrophysic
A theory and its metatheory in FS 0
Feferman has proposed FS0, a theory of finitary inductive systems, as a framework theory suitable for various purposes, including reasoning both in and about encoded theories. I look here at how practical FS0 really is. I formalise of a sequent calculus presentation of classical propositional logic in FS0 and show this can be used for work in both the theory and the metatheory. the latter is illustrated with a discussion of a proof of Gentzen's Hauptsatz
Techniques for augmenting the visualisation of dynamic raster surfaces
Despite their aesthetic appeal and condensed nature, dynamic raster surface representations such as a temporal series of a landform and an attribute series of a socio-economic attribute of an area, are often criticised for the lack of an effective information delivery and interactivity.In this work, we readdress some of the earlier raised reasons for these limitations -information-laden quality of surface datasets, lack of spatial and temporal continuity in the original data, and a limited scope for a real-time interactivity. We demonstrate with examples that the use of four techniques namely the re-expression of the surfaces as a framework of morphometric features, spatial generalisation, morphing, graphic lag and brushing can augment the visualisation of dynamic raster surfaces in temporal and attribute series
Investigation of finite-volume methods to capture shocks and turbulence spectra in compressible flows
The aim of the present paper is to provide a comparison between several
finite-volume methods of different numerical accuracy: second-order Godunov
method with PPM interpolation and high-order finite-volume WENO method. The
results show that while on a smooth problem the high-order method perform
better than the second-order one, when the solution contains a shock all the
methods collapse to first-order accuracy. In the context of the decay of
compressible homogeneous isotropic turbulence with shocklets, the actual
overall order of accuracy of the methods reduces to second-order, despite the
use of fifth-order reconstruction schemes at cell interfaces. Most important,
results in terms of turbulent spectra are similar regardless of the numerical
methods employed, except that the PPM method fails to provide an accurate
representation in the high-frequency range of the spectra. It is found that
this specific issue comes from the slope-limiting procedure and a novel hybrid
PPM/WENO method is developed that has the ability to capture the turbulent
spectra with the accuracy of a high-order method, but at the cost of the
second-order Godunov method. Overall, it is shown that virtually the same
physical solution can be obtained much faster by refining a simulation with the
second-order method and carefully chosen numerical procedures, rather than
running a coarse high-order simulation. Our results demonstrate the importance
of evaluating the accuracy of a numerical method in terms of its actual
spectral dissipation and dispersion properties on mixed smooth/shock cases,
rather than by the theoretical formal order of convergence rate.Comment: This paper was previously composed of 2 parts, and this submission
was part 1. It is now replaced by the combined pape
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