EPoS Contribution
EPoS Contribution
Radiation transfer modeling in the ALMA era

Christian Brinch
Leiden Observatory, Leiden, The Netherlands
Numerical radiation transfer and molecular excitation tools are essential when interpreting (sub-)mm line observations because such tools provide the interface between physical and chemical source models and the observed line spectra. As theoreticians construct ever more detailed models and new observational facilities give us observations in higher spectral and spatial resolution, better and faster radiation transfer tools are needed. We present a new code, the LIME code, to solve the radiation transfer problem. This code handles three dimensional input models and it gives out image predictions on a very high dynamical range of scales making it useful to model upcoming ALMA observations. We present first results obtained with the LIME code, including H2O line predictions in a protoplanetary disk for Herschel and high-resolution models of data from the Submillimeter Array.
Caption: Model prediction of water line emission from the hot surface layers of an edge-on protoplanetary disk. The cold mid-plane of the disk is emission free because the water is frozen out as ice. The water emission originates from a very thin layer.
Collaborators:
M. Hogerheijde, Leiden Observatory, NL
Suggested Session: Cores and Collapse, Early Phases of Disks