NUMERICAL-SOLUTION OF TIME-DEPENDENT COMPTON-SCATTERING PROBLEMS BY MEANS OF AN INTEGRAL-EQUATION

Compton scattering is important in determining the spectrum of certain compact high energy X-ray sources, and so to understand these sources w must be able to calculate the effect of Compton scattering on a radiation field. A method is presented in this paper which considerably extends the range of problems which can be solved numerically. In particular, time dependent problems where heating and cooling are important can be solved for gas temperatures and photon energies up to and somewhat beyond mec2,. © 1981 Royal Astronomical Society.