RADIATION TRANSPORT FOR EXPLOSIVE OUTFLOWS: OPACITY REGROUPING

Journal Article · Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/214/2/28· OSTI ID:22340152

Wollaeger, Ryan T. ^[1]

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1. Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison 1500 Engineering Drive, 410 ERB, Madison, WI 53706 (United States)

Implicit Monte Carlo (IMC) and Discrete Diffusion Monte Carlo (DDMC) are methods used to stochastically solve the radiative transport and diffusion equations, respectively. These methods combine into a hybrid transport-diffusion method we refer to as IMC-DDMC. We explore a multigroup IMC-DDMC scheme that in DDMC, combines frequency groups with sufficient optical thickness. We term this procedure ''opacity regrouping''. Opacity regrouping has previously been applied to IMC-DDMC calculations for problems in which the dependence of the opacity on frequency is monotonic. We generalize opacity regrouping to non-contiguous groups and implement this in SuperNu, a code designed to do radiation transport in high-velocity outflows with non-monotonic opacities. We find that regrouping of non-contiguous opacity groups generally improves the speed of IMC-DDMC radiation transport. We present an asymptotic analysis that informs the nature of the Doppler shift in DDMC groups and summarize the derivation of the Gentile-Fleck factor for modified IMC-DDMC. We test SuperNu using numerical experiments including a quasi-manufactured analytic solution, a simple 10 group problem, and the W7 problem for Type Ia supernovae. We find that opacity regrouping is necessary to make our IMC-DDMC implementation feasible for the W7 problem and possibly Type Ia supernova simulations in general. We compare the bolometric light curves and spectra produced by the SuperNu and PHOENIX radiation transport codes for the W7 problem. The overall shape of the bolometric light curves are in good agreement, as are the spectra and their evolution with time. However, for the numerical specifications we considered, we find that the peak luminosity of the light curve calculated using SuperNu is ∼10% less than that calculated using PHOENIX.

• OSTI ID: 22340152
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, Vol. 214, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0067-0049
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ANALYTICAL SOLUTION
ASYMPTOTIC SOLUTIONS
BOLOMETERS
COMPUTER CODES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DIAGRAMS
DIFFUSION EQUATIONS
DOPPLER EFFECT
LUMINOSITY
MONTE CARLO METHOD
OPACITY
RADIANT HEAT TRANSFER
RADIATION TRANSPORT
SPECTRA
STAR EVOLUTION
SUPERNOVAE
TRANSPORT THEORY
VISIBLE RADIATION