Magritte, a modern software library for spectral line radiative transfer

Document detail

ID

oai:arXiv.org:2411.03040

Topic

Astrophysics - Instrumentation and...

Author

Ceulemans, Thomas De Ceuster, Frederik Decin, Leen Yates, Jeremy

Year

2024

listing date

11/13/2024

Keywords

software

Metrics

Abstract

Spectral line observations are an indispensable tool to remotely probe the physical and chemical conditions throughout the universe.

Modelling their behaviour is a computational challenge that requires dedicated software.

In this paper, we present the first long-term stable release of Magritte, an open-source software library for line radiative transfer.

First, we establish its necessity with two applications.

Then, we introduce the overall design strategy and the application/programmer interface (API).

Finally, we present three key improvements over previous versions: (1) an improved re-meshing algorithm to efficiently coarsen the spatial discretisation of a model; (2) a variation on Ng-acceleration, a popular acceleration-of-convergence method for non-LTE line transfer; and, (3) a semi-analytic approximation for line optical depths in the presence of large velocity gradients.

;Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

Ceulemans, Thomas,De Ceuster, Frederik,Decin, Leen,Yates, Jeremy, 2024, Magritte, a modern software library for spectral line radiative transfer