Anisotropic radiative transfer problem in optically thick, strongly magnetized plasma: A comparison of results

Recently developed methods for solving the coherent radiative transferproblem in a strongly magnetized plasma are compared and analyzed for the caseof a semi-infinite, homogeneous plasma with the magnetic field perpendicular to the surface. The work of Meszaros and Bonazzola is shown to contain some errors. The accuracy of numerical methods proposed by Silant'ev and Nagel is investigated for various plasma parameters and photon energies. The coupled diffusion approximation developed by Nagel and Kaminker et al. appears to give quite satisfactory results and seems to be more efficient in many cases than direct numerical methods