Kompaneets equation

The Kompaneets equation describes frequency diffusion of a mean photon occupation number $n$ through repeated nonrelativistic Compton scattering. For thermal Electrons, with $x_e=h\nu /(k_B{T}_e)$ and $dy=(k_B{T}_e/m_e{c}^2)n_e{\sigma }_{T}cdt$, its full homogeneous form is ${\partial }_{y}n=x_e^{-2}{\partial }_{x_e}[x_e^4({\partial }_{x_e}n+n+n^2)]$. The drift and stimulated terms permit a thermal stationary spectrum. In the hot-electron limit $T_e\gg T_{\gamma }$, with low photon energies, they can be neglected relative to the diffusion term; any fixed linear frequency variable $x$ then gives ${\partial }_{y}n=x^{-2}{\partial }_x(x^4{\partial }_{x}n)$. The quantity $n$ is not the frequency-integrated photon number density.

The Compton y parameter is the Thomson scattering optical depth weighted by the dimensionless Electron temperature. It measures the integrated electron pressure along a line of sight. When hot, nonrelativistic electrons scatter much colder photons, the first-order radiation energy gain is $4y$ times the incident energy. The spectrum is redistributed while the total photon number density is conserved locally by scattering.