Abstract: The equations of ideal radiation magnetohydrodynamics (RMHD) serve as a fundamental mathematical model in many astrophysical applications. It is well-known that radiation can have a damping effect on solutions of associated initial-boundary-value problems. In other words, singular solutions like shocks can be prohibited.

In this paper, we consider discrete-ordinate approximations of the RMHD-system for general equations of state. If the magnetic fields are absent (i.e., if we consider radiation hydrodynamics), we prove the existence of global-in-time classical solutions for the Cauchy problem in one space dimension under an appropriate smallness condition on the inital data. We also show that counterparts of the compressive shock waves for the full RHD case and counterparts of the slow and fast MHD shock waves for the full RMHD-system can have structures in the presence of radiation if the amplitude is sufficiently small. Moreover, a new entropy function for the RMHD-system is presented.