A metriplectic formulation of polarized radiative transfer

Abstract

We present a metriplectic formulation of the radiative transfer equation with polarization and varying refractive index and show that this formulation automatically satisfies the first two laws of thermodynamics. In particular, the derived antisymmetric bracket enjoys the Jacobi identity. To obtain this formulation we suitably transform the equation and show that important physical quantities derived from the solution remain invariant under such a transformation.