Monte Carlo Primer

The following pages provide a very basic introduction to Monte Carlo radiative transfer techniques as they are used in TARDIS. All the information listed here can also be found in various papers by L. Lucy and in the main TARDIS publication (c.f. [AbbottLucy85], [MazzaliLucy93], [Lucy99a], [LongKnigge02], [Lucy02], [Lucy03], [Lucy05], [KerzendorfSim14])

• Monte Carlo Radiative Transfer - Basic Principles
• Monte Carlo Discretization - Energy Packets
• Packet Propagation
  • Initialization
  • Propagation in a spherical domain
  • Numerical and Physical Events
  • Physical Events
  • Implementation: Main Propagation loop
• Line Interaction Treatments
  • Resonant Scattering
  • Downbranching
  • Macro Atom Scheme
  • Comparison
• Volume-based Monte Carlo Estimators
  • Basic Principle
  • Volume-based Estimators in TARDIS
• Spectrum Generation with Virtual Packets
  • Virtual Packets
    • Virtual Packet Procedure
    • Interpretation
• Direct integration of the radiation field
  • Estimators
  • Integration
  • Implementation Details
  • Current Limitations
• Random Sampling Basics
  • Inverse transformation method
  • Examples
    • Isotropic Scattering
    • Next Interaction Location