The penetration of diffuse ultraviolet radiation into interstellar clouds
B. P. Flannery, W. Roberge, G. B. Rybicki;
ApJ, 1980, 236, 598
ABSTRACT:It is shown that the solution of the transfer equation appropriate for models of the penetration of diffuse UV radiation into interstellar clouds,
subject to attenuation by coherent, nonconservative, anisotropic
scattering from grains, can be expressed analytically, with arbitrary accuracy,
by means of the spherical harmonics method.
Models of plane-parallel
and homogeneous spherical clouds are given as functions of three
parameters: the central optical depth, the single scattering albedo, and the
parameter in the Henyey-Greenstein phase function.
These models
qualitatively confirm the results of earlier Monte Carlo simulations of dust
scattering, but reveal quantitative discrepancies: the earlier results
overestimated the actual mean intensity, often by more than an order of magnitude.
KEYWORDS: clouds, diffuse radiation, interstellar matter, radiative transfer, spherical harmonics, ultraviolet radiation, asymptotic methods, legendre functions, monte carlo method, transfer functions
CODE: flannery80