Study of Polarized Emission from Black Hole Accretion Disks

Using the established Athena++ Monte Carlo radiation transfer code package, we build upon it to incorporate polarized scattering and evolution of a photon as it is emitted from a black hole accretion disk and propagates to an observer far from the black hole. This is of particular interest in relation to the upcoming Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Ecplorer (IXPE) mission currently planned by NASA to launch in April 2021. This telescope focuses on observing the polarization of x-ray objects such as active galactic nuclei, pulsars, and black holes to better understand the production of x-rays in these objects. This thesis hopes to create predictions of how the evolution of the Stokes vector, which quantizes the polarization, evolves as a high energy photon follows a geodesic away from a black hole after being emitted from the disk.