Covariant Radiative Transfer for Black Hole Spacetimes

Understand

It has now become possible to study directly, via numerical simulation, the evolution of relativistic, radiation-dominated flows around compact objects.

• With this in mind we set out explicitly covariant forms of the radiative transfer equation that are suitable for numerical integration in curved spacetime or flat spacetime in curvilinear coordinates.
• Our work builds on and summarizes in consistent form earlier work by Lindquist, Thorne, Morita and Kaneko, and others.
• We give explicitly the basic equations in spherical-polar coordinates for Minkowski space and the Kerr spacetime in Kerr-Schild coordinates.