The Dirty Model. I. Monte Carlo Radiative Transfer through Dust

We present the DIRTY radiative transfer model in this paper and a companion paper. This model computes the polarized radiative transfer of photons from arbitrary distributions of stars through arbitrary distributions of dust using Monte Carlo techniques. The dust re-emission is done self-consistently with the dust absorption and scattering and includes all three important emission paths: equilibrium thermal emission, non-equilibrium thermal emission, and the aromatic features emission. The algorithm used for the radiative transfer allows for the efficient computation of the appearance of a model system as seen from any viewing direction. We present a simple method for computing an upper limit on the output quantity uncertainties for Monte Carlo radiative transfer models which use the weighted photon approach. Subject headings: radiative transfer