http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05088
Compton scattering is the dominant opacity source in hot neutron stars, accretion disks around black holes and hot coronae. We present here a set of numerical expressions of the Compton scattering redistribution functions for unpolarized radiation, which are more exact than the widely used Kompaneets equation. This paper fulfills three goals: 1. We have organized three existing algorithms into a form ready to use in radiative transfer and model atmosphere codes. 2. We present the correct algorithm derived first by Guilbert (1981). 3. We modify the exact algorithm by Suleimanov et al. (2012) in order to use it for the scattering in a very wide spectral range from hard X- rays to radio waves. We present sample computations of the Compton scattering redistribution functions in thermal plasma at temperatures corresponding to the atmospheres of bursting neutron stars and hot intergalactic medium. Our formulae are also useful to the study Compton scattering of unpolarised microwave background radiation in hot intra-cluster gas and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. We conclude, that the formulae by Guilbert (1981) and Suleimanov et al. (2012) yield practically the same numerical results for gas temperatures relevant to the atmospheres of X-ray bursting neutron stars, $T \le 10^8$ K.
J. Madej, A. Rozanska, A. Majczyna, et. al.
Wed, 17 Feb 16
48/55
Comments: 9 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS
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