Equations and algorithms for mixed-frame flux-limited diffusion radiation hydrodynamics

We analyze the mixed-frame equations of radiation hydrodynamics under the approximations of flux-limited diffusion and a thermal radiation field and derive the minimal set of evolution equations that includes all terms that are of leading order in any regime of nonrelativistic radiation hydrodynamics. Our equations are accurate to first order in v/c in the static diffusion regime. In contrast, we show that previous lower order derivations of these equations omit leading terms in at least some regimes. In comparison to comoving-frame formulations of radiation hydrodynamics, our equations have the advantage that they manifestly conserve total energy, making them very well suited to numerical simulations, particularly with adaptive meshes. For systems in the static diffusion regime, our analysis also suggests an algorithm that is both simpler and faster than earlier comoving-frame methods. We implement this algorithm in the Orion adaptive mesh refinement code and show that it performs well in a range of test problems.