11/12/18

Practise, practise, practise....

Electrodynamics of
Radiation Processes
Two lectures AND two tutorials per week
Lecturer: Eline Tolstoy
etolstoy@astro.rug.nl
http://www.astro.rug.nl/~etolstoy/radproc/

The secret to passing this course is going

Tutorials: Roland Timmerman
to the lectures and tutorials and taking
timmerman@astro.rug.nl them VERY seriously:

YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST PRACTISE

Main book: Radiative Processes in Astrophysics, Rybicki & Lightman
also use: High Energy Astrophysics, Longair (3 rd edition)

Course rooms a little bit chaotic…

Typically NOT as in the official schedule! Electrodynamics of
https://www.astro.rug.nl/~etolstoy/radproc/styled-5/index.html Radiation Processes

I. Definitions, Introduction to
Radiative Transfer theory

Chapter 1: Rybicki&Lightman
Sections 1.1 - 1.4

The Electro-Magnetic Spectrum Wien’s displacement law

maximum intensity of a blackbody in thermodynamic equilibrium at temperature T

Looking at the sky at different wavelengths can be thought of as providing different

temperature maps of the Universe according to Wien’s displacement law. Longair

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The night sky from Paranal observatory, Chile Optical

300–800 nm
3000–10 000 K.
Mostly integrated
light of stars, also
some hot diffuse
gas (star formation)
equidistant azimuthal polar

Hammer–Aitoff projection

the complete 4π steradians of the celestial sphere

projected onto a 2D flat surface Longair

Infra-red: cold Universe 1.2–2.2 μm <1000 K.

~300 million stars

Early 1950's, Knut Lundmark, Lund Observatory, Sweden

Bennett et al. 1996

Far infra-red 60-240 μm milli-meter
T=2.728K
the radiation of heated dust grains 5.7 mm (53 GHz)
COBE satellite
DIRBE/COBE satellite

total intensity over the sky

uniform component removed,

we see a dipole associated with the
motion of the Earth through the isotropic
background radiation, and a weak
signal from the Galactic plane
T = T 0 [1 + (v/c) cos θ]

dipole component removed,

The fluctuations out of Galactic plane are a
combination of noise and a genuine
Regions of star formation are particularly prominent features cosmological signal.

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milli-meter: CO molecule Radio 3 MHz < 𝛎 < 30 GHz 100m > λ > 1cm

Contrary to what might be expected from Wien’s law, radio observations provide
information about some of the very hottest, relativistic, plasmas in the Universe.

X-ray The multi-wavelength Universe

Radio sources Energy in relativistic matter equivalent: 100 million solar

masses or 108 M⊙c2 ≈ 2 × 1062 erg

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Supernovae remnants The Coma Cluster of galaxies: hot gas

Optical X-rays

Radiation processes involve emission, absorption, or scattering of

electromagnetic radiation.

γ-ray, E>100keV The Sun and other stars….

Magic telescope, La Palma

Spherical thinking.. Spherical thinking..

units of angle and solid angle - the radian

circumference of the circle is 2πr:

dΩ
dΩ

area of the sphere is 4πr2

steradian

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Measuring the radiation from astrophysical sources Net Flux Flux means the power going through some surface

a description of the transport

dΩ
of energy via radiation.
The net flux is obtained by integrating dF over all angles:

( erg s-1 cm -2 Hz -1 )

Iν is the specific intensity of the radiation

Solid Angle –spherical coordinates

Astronomers usually call the total flux of a star the luminosity L. We can
also talk about the luminosity Lν at a frequency ν ([Lν ] = erg s-1 Hz −1 )

dΩ

Solar luminosity

Luminosity of human body ~1010 erg s-1

Inverse square law for energy flux surface brightness: flux density is constant

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Radiative Energy Density Radiation Pressure

The energy density, u, of radiation is the amount The energy associated to photons results in a momentum and a
of energy per unit volume (erg cm-3) pressure.

dΩ

is definition of mean intensity

e.g. a comet’s tail is the result of radiation pressure exerted by
the Sun’s radiation on the particles given off by the comet.

Radiative Transfer

Now we consider radiation passing through matter, energy

maybe absorbed, emitted and/or scattered and the intensity
will not in general remain constant.

combining emission and absorption