ipole - semianalytic scheme for relativistic polarized radiative transport

Understand

We describe ${\tt ipole}$, a new public ray-tracing code for covariant, polarized radiative transport.

• The code extends the ${\tt ibothros}$ scheme for covariant, unpolarized transport using two representations of the polarized radiation field: in the coordinate frame, it parallel transports the coherency tensor; in the frame of the plasma it evolves the Stokes parameters under emission, absorption, and Faraday conversion.
• The transport step is implemented to be as spacetime- and coordinate- independent as possible.
• The emission, absorption, and Faraday conversion step is implemented using an analytic solution to the polarized transport equation with constant coefficients.