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FUV radiation strongly affects the physical and chemical state of molecular clouds, from protoplanetary disks to entire galaxies.

The solution of the FUV radiative transfer equation can be complicated if the most relevant radiative processes such us dust scattering and gas line absorption are included, and have realistic (non-uniform) properties, i.e. if optical properties are depth dependent.

We have extended the spherical harmonics method to solve for the FUV radiation field in externally or internally illuminated clouds taking into account gas absorption and coherent, nonconservative and anisotropic scattering by dust grains. The new formulation has been implemented in the Meudon PDR code and thus it will be publicly available.

Our formalism allows us to consistently include:  varying dust populations and  gas lines in the FUV radiative transfer. The FUV penetration depth rises for …