Radiation Hydrodynamics

This broad treatment provides an accessible introduction to the theory and the large-scale simulation methods currently used in radiation hydrodynamics. Chapters cover all the central topics, including: a review of the fundamentals of gas dynamics; methods for computational fluid dynamics; theory of radiative transfer and of the dynamical coupling of matter and radiation; and quantum mechanics of matter-radiation interaction. Also covered are the details of spectral line formation out of thermodynamic equilibrium; the theory of refraction and transfer of polarized light and current computational methods for radiation transport, and a description of some notable applications of the theory in astrophysics and laboratory plasmas. This is a valuable text for research scientists and graduate students in physics and astrophysics.

List of figures; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. A quick review of gas dynamics; 3. Numerical hydrodynamics; 4. Description of radiation; 5. Steady-state transfer; 6. The comoving-frame picture; 7. Hydrodynamics with radiation: waves and stability; 8. Radiation-matter interactions; 9. Spectral line transport; 10. Refraction and polarized light; 11. Numerical techniques for radiation transport; 12. Examples; References; Index.

This broad treatment provides an accessible introduction to the theory and the large-scale simulation methods currently used in radiation hydrodynamics. A valuable text for research scientists and graduate students in physics and astrophysics.

John Castor is a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA.