A Note on the Radiative and Collisional Branching Ratios in Polarized Radiation Transport with Coherent Scattering

We discuss the implementation of physically meaningful branching ratios between the CRD and partial redistribution contributions to the emissivity of a polarized multi-term atom in the presence of both inelastic and elastic collisions. Our derivation is based on a recent theoretical formulation of partially coherent scattering, and it relies on a heuristic diagrammatic analysis of the various radiative and collisional processes to determine the proper form of the branching ratios. The expression we obtain for the emissivity is ϵ = [ϵ⁽¹⁾ - ϵ⁽²⁾ _f.s.] + ϵ⁽²⁾, where ϵ⁽¹⁾ ϵ⁽²⁾ are the emissivity terms for the redistributed and partially coherent radiation, respectively, and where "f.s." implies that the corresponding term must be evaluated assuming a flat-spectrum average of the incident radiation. This result is shown to be in agreement with prior literature on the subject in the limit of the unpolarized multi-level atom.