The Stochastically Heated Grains Benchmark
Stochastically Heated Grains Benchmark
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Benchmarking the Calculation of Stochastic Heating and Emissivity of Dust Grains in the Context of Radiative Transfer Simulations

Contact: Peter Camps – Astronomical Observatory, Ghent University


Summary

Thermal emission by stochastically heated dust grains (SHG) plays an important role in multi-wavelength radiation transport through a dusty medium. It is therefore essential to verify that radiative transfer codes properly calculate the dust emission before studying the effects of spatial distribution and other model parameters on the simulated observables. In this benchmark we compare the dust emissivity calculated by six distinct radiative transfer codes with a reference solution, and discuss the differences between the methods used in the various codes and how they influence the results.

The dust model used in the SHG benchmarks is identical to the dust model in the TRUST benchmarks (Transport of Radiation through a DUSTy medium), which test the actual radiative transfer aspect of various codes.

The SHG benchmark paper was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics (Camps et al. 2015, A&A 580, A87) and can be downloaded here.

Participants

The following table lists the codes and authors participating in this benchmark. For more information on each of the codes, click the links below. For more information on the SHG benchmark, please contact Peter Camps.

SKIRTPeter Camps, Maarten Baes
DIRTYKarl Misselt, Karl Gordon
TRADINGSimone Bianchi
CRTMika Juvela, Tuomas Lunttila
MCFOSTChristophe Pinte, Michael Fitzgerald
DART-RayGiovanni Natale, Joerg Fischera, Cristina Popescu, Richard Tuffs
TRUSTJuergen Steinacker

The reference solutions were calculated with the public version of DustEM.

Index

This web site is organized as follows (also see the navigation bar at the top of the page):

Section Calculation regime Grain size distribution Grain properties
Full Solution stochastic heating as defined in dust model as defined in dust model
Single Grain Solution stochastic heating all grains have same size as defined in dust model
Equilibrium Solution equilibrium only as defined in dust model as defined in dust model
Effective Grain Solution equilibrium only single "effective" grain single "effective" grain