MPS-ATLAS: A fast all-in-one code for synthesising stellar spectra

¹ Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
e-mail: witzke@mps.mpg.de
² Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, SW7 2AZ London, UK
³ School of Space Research, Kyung Hee University, 701 Yongin, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea
⁴ Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, 60 Garden Street, 02138 Cambridge, MA, USA

Received: 1 January 2021
Accepted: 28 May 2021

Abstract

Context. Stellar spectral synthesis is essential for various applications, ranging from determining stellar parameters to comprehensive stellar variability calculations. New observational resources as well as advanced stellar atmosphere modelling, taking three dimensional effects from radiative magnetohydrodynamics calculations into account, require a more efficient radiative transfer.

Aims. For accurate, fast and flexible calculations of opacity distribution functions (ODFs), stellar atmospheres, and stellar spectra, we developed an efficient code building on the well-established ATLAS9 code. The new code also paves the way for easy and fast access to different elemental compositions in stellar calculations.

Methods. For the generation of ODF tables, we further developed the well-established DFSYNTHE code by implementing additional functionality and a speed-up by employing a parallel computation scheme. In addition, the line lists used can be changed from Kurucz’s recent lists. In particular, we implemented the VALD3 line list.

Results. A new code, the Merged Parallelised Simplified ATLAS, is presented. It combines the efficient generation of ODF, atmosphere modelling, and spectral synthesis in local thermodynamic equilibrium, therefore being an all-in-one code. This all-in-one code provides more numerical functionality and is substantially faster compared to other available codes. The fully portable MPS-ATLAS code is validated against previous ATLAS9 calculations, the PHOENIX code calculations, and high-quality observations.