Sparse tensor spherical harmonics approximation in radiative transfer

The stationary monochromatic radiative transfer equation is a partial differential transport equation stated on a five-dimensional phase space. To obtain a well-posed problem, boundary conditions have to be prescribed on the inflow part of the domain boundary.We solve the equation with a multi-level Galerkin FEM in physical space and a spectral discretization with harmonics in solid angle and show that the benefits of the concept of sparse tensor products, known from the context of sparse grids, can also be leveraged in combination with a spectral discretization. Our method allows us to include high spectral orders without incurring the “curse of dimension” of a five-dimensional computational domain.Neglecting boundary conditions, we find analytically that for smooth solutions, the convergence rate of the full tensor product method is retained in our method up to a logarithmic factor, while the number of degrees of freedom grows essentially only as fast as for the purely spatial problem. For the case with boundary conditions, we propose a splitting of the physical function space and a conforming tensorization. Numerical experiments in two physical and one angular dimension show evidence for the theoretical convergence rates to hold in the latter case as well.