Radiative transfer in a semi-infinite plane parallel atmosphere with an inhomogeneous source function

We investigate the multiple scattering of radiation in semi-infinite homogeneous atmosphere when the sources of the radiation are distributed inhomogeneous, for example, are created by restricted beams penetrating into the medium. The case of isotropic scattering is considered. It is shown that the density of radiation and the intensity of outgoing radiation for any forms of the sources can be represented as some integrals with the real and imaginary parts of the universal H-function, which satisfies the nonlinear integral equation. We calculated the intensity of radiation emerging from the surface after multiple scattering for the case when a beam with a finite radius incident perpendicular on the medium surface. The results allowed us to estimate quantitatively when the intensity of outgoing radiation in the center of a beam coincides with that for the classical case of unbounded flux (the case considered by Chandrasekhar et al.). We compared our exact solutions with those in the diffusion approximation. For conservative medium the difference is ≃20–30%, depending on the particular forms of the radiation sources. For absorbing medium the difference is much larger. Our exact semi-analytical solution can be generalized for the cases of multiple anisotropic scattering of the polarized beams. The presented simple theory can be used at the consideration of close binary systems, flare stars etc.