Talk:Radiative transfer

Untitled
Can anybody draw a diagram to illustrate the Definitions section - diagrams help loads with things like this. --H2g2bob 16:44, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Source function
I miss connections to the source function. E.g. the source function being the ratio of the emission coefficient to the absorption coefficient, and it's implications on the equation for radiative transfer. I may be able to write some of that eventually, but I think others may be able to do it a lot better than me. -Siljebj 12:10, 3 June 2006 (GMT)

Generality of the RTE
Wouldn't Wikipedia be the right place to start the discussion about RTE at a higher level?

Especially, to reduce the RTE to the atmospheric case seems very limitating. Radiative transfer (and hence the RTE) is used in many other disciplines whether Earth related (oceans, vegetation, snow and ice) or Astronomy (stars), medicine (tomography), industry (fabrics, cristals) and certainly other I do not know.

I am not sure up to which degree a general RT Equation can be written. For example, what if the far-field and/or coherence of light scattering does not hold?

My prime intention was to update this article with a paragraph on the Two Stream solution (or approximation), but I would rather try and englobe this article in a more general one first. For example, it seems the page "radiative transfer" does not exist and could serve as a portal to this page (as "radiative transfer equation in the atmosphere").

What do you think?

--LThomas 10:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm reading about radiative transfer for the first time here, so maybe I'm mistaken, but shouldn't $$\sigma_{\nu}$$ be dependent on the spatial direction in which the scattering is measured (i.e., inclination and azimuth angles), not on $$\Omega$$ (which is just a solid angle)? Multi io 22:45, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Solid angle is directional quantity pruthvi 21:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * What? How so? A solid angle is a kind of angular surface area. E.g. the lunar disk, as seen from earth, has a solid angle of ~6e-5 steradians. Where is the directional quantity in that? Multi io (talk) 02:32, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The direction of solid angle for above example is normal direction of lunar disk. pruthvi (talk) 22:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Pruthvi is right, Moon e.g. has an angular direction related to your position on earth Kampmannpeine (talk) 22:14, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Merger Proposal
It looks like nothing in the "Radiative transfer equation and diffusion theory for photon transport in biological tissue" page is specific to biological tissue. Instead of having a page with such a specific name, its content should be merged into this more general page on radiative transfer. 67.183.16.32 (talk) 17:19, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Terms clarification
In "The equation of radiative transfer" what is "c" and "Omega-hat"? Could these terms be made clearer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by OEP (talk • contribs) 01:36, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Emission coefficient? Or emission intensity/source/function?
The current text contains: "$$j_\nu$$ is the emission coefficient".

Since in the differential equation $$j_\nu$$ does not multiply a variable, I doubt "coefficient" is the best name for it.

I would suggest it be named emission intensity, emission source, emission function, or similar. Any objections or suggestions from someone knowledgeable?Redav (talk) 15:16, 23 December 2020 (UTC)