We solve the classic albedo and Milne problems of plane-parallel illumination of an isotropically-scattering half-space when generalized to a Euclidean domain @math for arbitrary @math . A continuous family of pseudo-problems and related @math functions arises and includes the classical 3D solutions, as well as 2D "Flatland" and rod-model solutions, as special cases. The Case-style eigenmode method is applied to the general problem and the internal scalar densities, emerging distributions, and their respective moments are expressed in closed-form. Universal properties invariant to dimension @math are highlighted and we find that a discrete diffusion mode is not universal for @math in absorbing media. We also find unexpected correspondences between differing dimensions and between anisotropic 3D scattering and isotropic scattering in high dimension.
Transport in both the rod and Flatland settings finds numerous application in practice. The rod model is equivalent to the two-stream approximation in plane-parallel atmospheric scattering @cite_85 @cite_22 , which is still a common method of solution for radiation budgets @cite_54 . Transport in Flatland also has many real-world applications, such as sea echo @cite_71 , seismology @cite_96 , animal migration @cite_37 @cite_74 , and wave propagation and diffraction in plates and ice @cite_15 @cite_62 @cite_39 . Also, planar waveguides comprised of dielectric plates with controlled or random patterns of holes lead to 2D transport and have proven useful for studying engineered disorder @cite_35 . Similarly, bundles of aligned dielectric fibers, such as clumps of hair or fur, can also be treated with a Flatland approach @cite_97 @cite_79 @cite_88 @cite_9 , where it is common to employ an approximate separable product of 1D and 2D solutions @cite_75 . Reactor design also makes use of such 2D 1D decompositions @cite_89 .
@cite_35 @cite_37 @cite_62 @cite_22 @cite_97 @cite_54 @cite_85 @cite_96 @cite_9 @cite_39 @cite_89 @cite_79 @cite_71 @cite_74 @cite_88 @cite_15 @cite_75
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We study the flatland (two dimensional) linear transport equation, under an angular2@pperiodicity assumption both on particle density function @j(x,y,@q) and on the differential scattering @s"s(@q). We consider the beam problem, with a forward peaked source on phase-space, and derive P"1 approximation with a diffusion coefficient of 1 2@s"t"r, (versus 1 3@s"t"r of the three dimensional problem), where @s"t"r is the transport cross section. Further assumptions as peaked @s"s(@q) near @q=0 (small angle of scattering), and small angle of flight (@q 0) yield Fokker-Planck and Fermi approximations with the diffusion coefficients @s"t"r (rather than @s"t"r 2 of the three dimensional case). We discretize the problem using four different Galerkin schemes and justify the results through some numerical examples. A growing acceptance of fiber-reinforced composite materials imparts some relevance to exploring the effects which a predominantly linear scattering lattice may have upon interior radiative transport. Indeed, a central feature of electromagnetic wave propagation within such a lattice, if sufficiently dilute, is ray confinement to cones whose half-angles are set by that between lattice and the incident ray. When such propagation is subordinated to a viewpoint of an unpolarized intensity transport, one arrives at a somewhat simplified variant of the Boltzmann equation with spherical scattering demoted to its cylindrical counterpart. With a view to initiating a hopefully wider discussion of such phenomena, we follow through in detail the half-space albedo problem. This is done first along canonical lines that harness the Wiener-Hopf technique, and then once more in a discrete ordinates setting via flux decomposition along the eigenbasis of the underlying attenuation scattering matrix. Good agreement is seen to prevail. We further suggest that the Case singular eigenfunction apparatus could likewise be evolved here in close analogy to its original, spherical scattering model. A cursory contact with related problems in the astrophysical literature suggests, in addition, that the basic physical fidelity of our scalar radiative transfer equation (RTE) remains open to improvement by passage to a (4×1) Stokes vector, (4×4) matricial setting. We develop a definitive physical-space scattering theory for the scalar wave equation on Kerr exterior backgrounds in the general subextremal case |a|<M. In particular, we prove results corresponding to "existence and uniqueness of scattering states" and "asymptotic completeness" and we show moreover that the resulting "scattering matrix" mapping radiation fields on the past horizon and past null infinity to radiation fields on the future horizon and future null infinity is a bounded operator. The latter allows us to give a time-domain theory of superradiant reflection. The boundedness of the scattering matrix shows in particular that the maximal amplification of solutions associated to ingoing finite-energy wave packets on past null infinity is bounded. On the frequency side, this corresponds to the novel statement that the suitably normalised reflection and transmission coefficients are uniformly bounded independently of the frequency parameters. We further complement this with a demonstration that superradiant reflection indeed amplifies the energy radiated to future null infinity of suitable wave-packets as above. The results make essential use of a refinement of our recent proof [M. Dafermos, I. Rodnianski and Y. Shlapentokh-Rothman, Decay for solutions of the wave equation on Kerr exterior spacetimes III: the full subextremal case |a|<M, arXiv:1402.6034] of boundedness and decay for solutions of the Cauchy problem so as to apply in the class of solutions where only a degenerate energy is assumed finite. We show in contrast that the analogous scattering maps cannot be defined for the class of finite non-degenerate energy solutions. This is due to the fact that the celebrated horizon red-shift effect acts as a blue-shift instability when solving the wave equation backwards. SUMMARY In this paper, we address the solution of three-dimensional heterogeneous Helmholtz problems discretized with second-order finite difference methods with application to acoustic waveform inversion in geophysics. In this setting, the numerical simulation of wave propagation phenomena requires the approximate solution of possibly very large indefinite linear systems of equations. For that purpose, we propose and analyse an iterative two-grid method acting on the Helmholtz operator where the coarse grid problem is solved inaccurately. A cycle of a multigrid method applied to a complex shifted Laplacian operator is used as a preconditioner for the approximate solution of this coarse problem. A single cycle of the new method is then used as a variable preconditioner of a flexible Krylov subspace method. We analyse the properties of the resulting preconditioned operator by Fourier analysis. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm on three-dimensional applications. The proposed numerical method allows us to solve three-dimensional wave propagation problems even at high frequencies on a reasonable number of cores of a distributed memory computer. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.