Radiative Transfer in Moving Media

The advancement of observational techniques over the years has led to the discovery of a large number of stars exhibiting complex spectral structures, thus necessitating the search for new techniques and methods to study radiative transfer in such stars with moving envelopes. This led to the introduction of the concept of "photon escape probability" and the wisdom of expressing the transfer equations in "comoving frames" (CMF). Radiative transfer problems in spherically moving media form a branch of mathematical physics which uses mathematics of a very distinctive kind. Radiative Transfer in Moving Media records the basic mathematical methodologies, both analytical and numerical, developed for solving radiation transfer problems in spherically symmetric moving media, in the consideration of macroscopic velocity fields only. Part I contains the basic notions of radiation-matter interaction in participating media and constructs the relevant transfer equations to be solved in the subsequent chapters. Part II considers the basic mathematical methods for solving the transfer problems in extensive moving atmospheres when it is observed in the lab frame. Part III introduces the analytical and numerical methods for solving radiative transfer problems in spherically symmetric moving atmospheres when expressed in the comoving frame. This book is addressed to graduate students and researchers in Astrophysics, in particular to those studying radiative transfer in stellar atmospheres.