In atmospheric radiation, Chandrasekhar's X- and Y-function appears as the solutions of problems involving diffusive reflection and transmission, introduced by the Indian American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.[1][2][3][4][5] The Chandrasekhar's X- and Y-function
defined in the interval
, satisfies the pair of nonlinear integral equations
![{\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}X(\mu )&=1+\mu \int _{0}^{1}{\frac {\Psi (\mu ')}{\mu +\mu '}}[X(\mu )X(\mu ')-Y(\mu )Y(\mu ')]\,d\mu ',\\[5pt]Y(\mu )&=e^{-\tau _{1}/\mu }+\mu \int _{0}^{1}{\frac {\Psi (\mu ')}{\mu -\mu '}}[Y(\mu )X(\mu ')-X(\mu )Y(\mu ')]\,d\mu '\end{aligned}}}](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/acece5b1d39d913fff4aa1c9df24b3c538b15bc4)
where the characteristic function
is an even polynomial in
generally satisfying the condition
![{\displaystyle \int _{0}^{1}\Psi (\mu )\,d\mu \leq {\frac {1}{2}},}](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/6fc79555be5291b5a90f822f6720aeaf2f23edd9)
and
is the optical thickness of the atmosphere. If the equality is satisfied in the above condition, it is called conservative case, otherwise non-conservative. These functions are related to Chandrasekhar's H-function as
![{\displaystyle X(\mu )\rightarrow H(\mu ),\quad Y(\mu )\rightarrow 0\ {\text{as}}\ \tau _{1}\rightarrow \infty }](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/6920a4748c56b4aa18a1a7466cd2293a407bde95)
and also
![{\displaystyle X(\mu )\rightarrow 1,\quad Y(\mu )\rightarrow e^{-\tau _{1}/\mu }\ {\text{as}}\ \tau _{1}\rightarrow 0.}](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/2eb312d25fd78e22aae24650f99104df99fdb6d3)
- ^ Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan. Radiative transfer. Courier Corporation, 2013.
- ^ Howell, John R., M. Pinar Menguc, and Robert Siegel. Thermal radiation heat transfer. CRC press, 2010.
- ^ Modest, Michael F. Radiative heat transfer. Academic press, 2013.
- ^ Hottel, Hoyt Clarke, and Adel F. Sarofim. Radiative transfer. McGraw-Hill, 1967.
- ^ Sparrow, Ephraim M., and Robert D. Cess. "Radiation heat transfer." Series in Thermal and Fluids Engineering, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978, Augmented ed. (1978).