Bibcode
del Pino Alemán, T.; Manso Sainz, R.; Trujillo Bueno, J.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 784, Issue 1, article id. 46, 10 pp. (2014).
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3
2014
Journal
Citations
7
Refereed citations
4
Description
Line scattering polarization can be strongly affected by Rayleigh
scattering at neutral hydrogen and Thomson scattering at free electrons.
Often a depolarization of the continuum results, but the Doppler
redistribution produced by the continuum scatterers, which are light
(hence, fast), induces more complex interactions between the
polarization in spectral lines and in the continuum. Here we formulate
and solve the radiative transfer problem of scattering line polarization
with non-coherent continuum scattering consistently. The problem is
formulated within the spherical tensor representation of atomic and
light polarization. The numerical method of solution is a generalization
of the Accelerated Lambda Iteration that is applied to both the atomic
system and the radiation field. We show that the redistribution of the
spectral line radiation due to the non-coherence of the continuum
scattering may modify the shape of the emergent fractional linear
polarization patterns significantly, even yielding polarization signals
above the continuum level in intrinsically unpolarizable lines.
Related projects
Magnetism, Polarization and Radiative Transfer in Astrophysics
Magnetic fields pervade all astrophysical plasmas and govern most of the variability in the Universe at intermediate time scales. They are present in stars across the whole Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, in galaxies, and even perhaps in the intergalactic medium. Polarized light provides the most reliable source of information at our disposal for the
Tanausú del
Pino Alemán