Course description
Radiative transfer describes how radiation passes through matter. It is a fundamental branch of physics that is used in many applications from astrophysics to medical science. It requires an interdisciplinary mindset that combines physics, mathematics, remote sensing, spectroscopy, etc.
In this course, the radiative transfer equation will be derived and its solutions discussed. In order to perform radiative transfer, one has to understand the cross sections or opacities of atoms and molecules, which will be treated in detail. An approximate method that is the workhorse in atmospheric science is the two-stream method, which will be used to understand how to derive detailed solutions for radiative transfer and appreciate the caveats and shortcomings associated with them. Scattering and Mie theory will be discussed. Advanced topics such as the Feautrier method, delta-Eddington approximation, discrete ordinates method and Lambda iteration will be covered. Several weeks of the course will be devoted to applications of radiative transfer to real physical problems.
There will be 45-minute exercise sessions during most weeks for the students to work on example problem sets. The course textbook is "Exoplanetary Atmospheres: Theoretical Concepts & Foundations" by Kevin Heng (Princeton University Press, 2017), which is available for loan from the university library in Exakte Wissenschaften (ExWi).
