Optimizing the opacity sampling method

TL;DRAbstract

Modern computers allow solutions of the radiative transfer problem at a large number of frequencies during the iter- ative process of computing a detailed line-blanketed hydrostatic model atmosphere. However, the computing time increases ap- proximately linearly with the number of frequency points. For computationally more complex and time-consuming problems, such as dust driven winds or pulsating AGB stars, it is there- fore often not feasible to solve the radiative transfer problem for more than a single (i.e. mean or constant opacity) or a very mod- est number of frequencies. This paper analyzes how to optimize the selection of frequency points in particular when solving the radiative transfer problem at a very small number of points. We compute opacity sampled hydrostatic model atmospheres based on a large number of opacity sampling frequency points (of the order of 10.000), and successively reduce the number of fre- quencies in order to quantify the statistical error in the model

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