Effects of polarization on numerical accuracy of radiative transfer

Polarization is one of the most important characteristics of the scattering light,but the scalar radiative transfer equation does not include the polarization information.However,if the polarization of the scattering light or the high accuracy of numerical simulation is considered,the vector radiative transfer equation need to be solved.In this paper,the doubling-adding method was adopted to solve the vector radiative transfer equation.Two different plane-parallel and vertically-homogeneous mediums were taken as examples to analyze the numerical error due to omitting light polarization.The numerical result indicates that in the medium with large albedo,small optical depth and a specular reflective surface,the maximal relative error of radiative intensity could reach as much as 10%,while in the medium with large albedo,large optical depth and parallel solar irradiation,the maximal relative error of radiative intensity could reach 6%～7%.However,there is just a little influence on numerical results of heat flux.