***********************************************************
OATS-DAUT SEMINAR
***********************************************************
Speaker: Lucio Crivellari (Inst. de Astrof. de Canarias and Trieste Univ.)

Title: Algorithms for the solution of non-linear and non-local problems

Date: Friday, May 15th, 2008
Time: 12:00
Venue: Villa Bazzoni

***********************************************************
Abstract: The aim of this seminar is to give a - necessarily - short account of our long lasting research work on numerical algorithms for the computation of stellar atmosphere models. I will introduce the stellar atmosphere problem as a paradigm of non-linear and non-local problems, and successively outline our Iterative Sequential Approach (ISA), which not only results to be very effective for solving the former specific problem, but can also yield a general strategy for the iterative solution of this class of problems. The IAS is hierarchically organized into a system of blocks, each of them dealing separately with one (or a very limited number) of the physical processes that take place in a stellar atmosphere. This distinctive feature of our method will allow me in a natural way to comment briefly upon the state-of-the-art of the numerical treatment of the physics inside each single block (e.g., radiative transfer, convection, equation of state, opacity, ...) and our own contributions. The final discussion will be open to possible applications of the ISA to other specific problems, beyond the scope of stellar atmospheres.
***********************************************************
contact: Andrea Biviano (OATS)