Equations of general relativistic radiation hydrodynamics from a tensor formalism

Abstract

Radiation interacts with matter via exchange of energy and momentum. When matter is moving with a relativistic velocity or when the background space - time is strongly curved, rigorous relativistic treatment of hydrodynamics and radiative transfer is required. Here, we derive fully general relativistic radiation hydrodynamic equations from a covariant tensor formalism. The equations can be applied to any three-dimensional problems and are rather straightforward to understand compared to the comoving frame-based equations. The current approach is applicable to any space - time or coordinates, but in this work we specifically choose the Schwarzschild space - time to show explicitly how the hydrodynamic and the radiation moment equations are derived. Some important aspects of relativistic radiation hydrodynamics and the difficulty with the radiation moment formalism are discussed as well. © 2006 RAS.