Ultimate Fast Gyrosynchrotron Codes

The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in practical applications of microwave gyrosynchrotron emission for plasma diagnostics and three-dimensional modeling of solar flares and other astrophysical objects. This breakthrough became possible due to an apparently minor, technical development of fast gyrosynchrotron codes, which enormously reduced the computation time needed to calculate a single spectrum, while preserving the accuracy of the computation. However, the available fast codes are limited in that they can only be used for a factorized distribution over the energy and pitch angle, while the distribution of electrons over energy or pitch angle is limited to a number of predefined analytical functions. In realistic simulations, these assumptions do not hold; thus, the codes free from the mentioned limitations are called for. To remedy this situation, we extended our fast codes to work with an arbitrary input distribution function of radiating electrons. We accomplished this by implementing fast codes for a distribution function described by an arbitrary numerically defined array. In addition, we removed several other limitations of the available fast codes and improved treatment of the free-free component. The ultimate fast codes presented here allow for an arbitrary combination of the analytically and numerically defined distributions, which offers the most flexible use of the fast codes. We illustrate the code with a few simple examples.

Automated summary

In the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the practical applications of microwave gyrosynchrotron emission for plasma diagnostics and astrophysical object modeling. The development of fast gyrosynchrotron codes has dramatically reduced computation time, but current limitations in the codes call for more flexible solutions to handle arbitrary input distributions for radiating electrons.