Basic principles and objects

One of the main ideas of exo_k is to offer the possibility to easily convert radiative data to and from many different formats.

For this, we have created several classes that are abstract representations of a given type of data, independently from the way these data are formatted in the input files.

These various structures and how to go from one to the other (through functions written with ‘()’) are summarized below. The list of functions is far from exhaustive, but you can use this page to identify a class or a function you are interested in and search for it in the search bar or the Getting started section.

_images/schema.png

Gray boxes depict input data files, whether they are for k-coefficients, cross-sections, CIA data, or high resolution spectra. For the latter, many boxes are shown because are often in many files, one per temperature and pressure point.

Classes

Blue boxes represent classes in the library:

  • Xtable: A class containing cross-sections for a given gas on a (Pressure, Temperature, wavenumber) grid.

  • Ktable: A class containing cross-sections for a given gas on a (Pressure, Temperature, wavenumber, g-point) grid.

    Although both Xtables and Ktables can represent pure species, it can also represent mixes with variable volume mixing ratios, as long as these volume mixing ratios are completely determined by the temperature and pressure of the gas so that we do not add a dimension for composition to the grid (e.g. a gas mixture in thermo-chemical equilibrium).

  • Ktable5d: A class containing cross-sections for a gas mixture on a (Pressure, Temperature, Vol. mix. ratio, wavenumber, g-point) grid. A variant from Ktable, this class represents a mixture of gases where one of the gases is free to vary independently (for example, a mix of N2, CO2, and CH4 in fixed quantities, with a free quantity of water vapor, as in Earth’s atmosphere). This is often used inside Global Climate Models.

    The Vol. mix. ratio axis of the table stands for the vmr of the free gas, which is often called the variable gas.

  • Cia_table: A class for absorption coefficients due to Collision Induced Absorption given on a (Temperature, wavenumber) grid for a given CIA pair (e.g. H2-He, H2-H2, H2O-N2, etc.).

The classes above represent individual tables, and these are the objects you will want to use if you want to modify a table and/or save it to another format to be used in a different code. For the kind of modifications you can apply to the various types of tables (binning, (P,T) remaping, mixing, etc.), have a look at the Getting started section.

To obtain opacities for your gas (or gas mixture) directly from the library, you’ll need to use the following objects that are, literally, dictionaries of individual tables:

  • Kdatabase: A dictionary containing as many Ktable or Xtables as you want (but not both), or a unique Ktable5d. Each table in the database is identified by the name of the gas (molecule) it describes.

    A Kdatabase can be used as a stand alone to create a Xtable, Ktable, or Ktable5d for a mix of gases with the random overlap method (see create_mix_ktable() and create_mix_ktable5d()). But is can also serve as a library of opacity data to be used directly for atmospheric modeling (see below).

    It can be created by adding tables one by one (add_ktables()) if you need to customize them beforehand, but many tables can be directly loaded from input files all at once with Kdatabase().

  • CIAdatabase: Idem for CIA tables and molecule pairs.

  • Gas_mix: This object can be used to specify a mixture of gases along with its thermodynamical properties (basically, pressures, temperatures, and the volume mixing ratios of all the gases). This object can use the database of your choice to compute the radiative properties of the gas at the specified (P, T, x) points. This is what you will want to use if you want to directly incorporate opacities in your own radiative transfer code.

  • Atm: This object represents a planetary atmosphere with a 1D (P, T, composition) atmospheric profile along with data about the planet (Radius, gravity, etc.). This object can use the database of your choice to compute directly the emission_spectrum() or the transmission_spectrum() of your planet. One can also compte the radiative heating rates with heating_rate(). This class can be used to test the sensitivity of your final spectrum to your initial data (resolution, etc.), but also as a full fledged planetary spectrum generator.

  • Atm_evolution:

    An extension of the Atm class, this object now allows you to model the evolution of your atmosphere in time or simply to find the equilibrium thermal profile for a given planet knowing its composition and insolation. The atmospheric model includes the effect of dry convection, turbulent diffusion, and moist processes (condensation, moist convection, and precipitations) for any number of species