Introduction

What is RADMC-3D?

RADMC-3D is a software package for astrophysical radiative transfer calculations in arbitrary 1-D, 2-D or 3-D geometries. It is mainly written for continuum radiative transfer in dusty media, but also includes modules for gas line transfer. Typical applications would be protoplanetary disks, pre- and proto-stellar molecular cloud cores, and similar objects. It does not treat photoionization of gas, nor does it treat chemistry. It can self-consistently compute dust temperatures for the radiative transfer, but it is not equipped for self-consistent gas temperature computations (as this requires detailed coupling to photochemistry). The main strength of RADMC-3D lies in the flexibility of the spatial setup of the models: One can create or use parameterized dust and/or gas density distributions, or one can import these from snapshots of hydrodynamic simulations.

Capabilities

Here is a list of current and planned features. Those features that are now already working are marked with [+], while those which are not yet (!!) built in are marked with [-]. Those that are currently being developed are marked with [.] and those that are ready, but are still in the testing phase are marked with [t].

  1. Coordinate systems:

  1. [+] Cartesian coordinates (3-D)

  2. [+] Spherical coordinates (1-D, 2-D and 3-D)

  1. Gridding systems (regular and adaptive mesh refinement grids are available for cartesian and spherical coordinates):

  1. [+] Regular

  2. [+] Adaptive Mesh Refinement: oct-tree style

  3. [+] Adaptive Mesh Refinement: layered (‘patch’) style

  4. [-] Voronoi gridding [To be implemented on request]

  1. Radiation mechanisms:

    1. [+] Dust continuum, thermal emission

    2. [+] Dust continuum scattering:

    1. [+] …in isotropic approximation

    2. [+] …with full anisotropy

    3. [+] …with full Stokes and Polarization

    1. [-] Dust quantum heated grains [To be implemented on request]

    2. [t] Polarized dust emission by aligned grains [first test version]

    3. [+] Gas line transfer (LTE)

    4. [+] Gas line transfer (non-LTE: LVG)

    5. [+] Gas line transfer (non-LTE: LVG + Escape Probability)

    6. [-] Gas line transfer (non-LTE: full transfer)

    7. [+] Gas line transfer with user-defined populations

    8. [+] Gas continuum opacity and emissivity sources

  2. Radiation netto sources for continuum:

    1. [+] Discrete stars positioned at will

    2. [t] Continuous ‘starlike’ source

    3. [t] Continuous ‘dissipation’ source

    4. [t] External ‘interstellar radiation field’

  3. Imaging options:

    1. [+] Observer from ‘infinite’ distance

    2. [+] Zoom-in at will

    3. [+] Flux-conserving imaging, i.e. pixels are recursively refined

    4. [+] A movie-making tool

    5. [+] Multiple wavelengths in a single image

    6. [+] Local observer with perspective view (for PR movies!)

  4. Spectrum options:

    1. [+] SED spectrum (spectrum on ‘standard’ wavelength grid)

    2. [+] Spectrum on any user-specified wavelength grid

    3. [+] Spectrum of user-specified sub-region (pointing)

    4. [t] Specification of size and shape of a primary ‘beam’ for spectra

  5. User flexibility:

    1. [+] Free model specification via tabulated input files

    2. [+] Easy special-purpose compilations of the code (optional)

  6. Front-end Python packages:

    1. [+] Python simple tools for RADMC-3D

    2. [+] Python RADMC-3D library {smalltt radmc3dPy} (author: A. Juhasz)

    1. [+] Stars can be treated as point-sources or as spheres

    2. [+] Option to calculate the mean intensity \(J_\nu(\vec x)\) in the model

    3. [+] OpenMP parallellization of the Monte Carlo

Version tracker

The RADMC-3D software package in under continuous development. A very detailed development log-book is found in the git repository. A more user-friendly overview of the development history can be found in this manual, in appendix ref{chap-development-history}.

Contributing authors

The main author of RADMC-3D is Cornelis P. Dullemond. However, the main author of the radmc3dPy Python package is Attila Juhasz.

Numerous people have made contributions to RADMC-3D. Major contributions are from:

  • Michiel Min

  • Attila Juhasz

  • Adriana Pohl

  • Rahul Shetty

  • Farzin Sereshti

  • Thomas Peters

  • Benoit Commercon

  • Alexandros Ziampras

The code profited from testing, feedback and bug reports from (incomplete list):

  • Daniel Harsono

  • Rainer Rolffs

  • Laszlo Szucs

  • Sean Andrews

  • Stella Offner

  • Chris Beaumont

  • Katrin Rosenfeld

  • Soren Frimann

  • Jon Ramsey

  • Seokho Lee

  • Blake Hord

  • Tilman Birnstiel

  • Uma Gorti

and others.

Disclaimer

IMPORTANT NOTICE 1: I/We reject all responsibility for the use of this package. The package is provided as-is, and we are not responsible for any damage to hardware or software, nor for incorrect results that may result from the software. The user is fully responsible for any results from this code, and we strongly recommend thorough testing of the code before using its results in any scientific papers.

IMPORTANT NOTICE 2: Any publications which involve the use of this software must mention the name of this software package and cite the accompanying paper once it is published (Dullemond et al.in prep), or before that the above mentioned web site.