Working with Parameter Files

Parameter files can be read into Paramfile objects, manipulated, and written back out. Many parameters are accessible as object attributes:

>>> par = mcfost.Paramfile('examples/ref2.19.para')
>>> par.version
2.17
>>> par.grid_n_rad
100
>>> par.RT_imin
45

Attribute names generally correspond to variable names as stated in the MCFOST Manual. The attributes provide read/write access to all the settings in that parameter file.:

>>> print "Distance:", par.distance, 'pc'
>>> print "Wavelength range:", par.lambda_min, " to", par.lambda_max, "microns"
>>> print "Changing distance to 200 pc"
>>> par.distance = 200
>>> print "Distance:", par.distance, 'pc'

Distance: 140.0 pc
Wavelength range: 0.1  to 3000.0 microns
Changing distance to 200 pc
Distance: 200 pc

Derived Quantities

There are also some additional readable quantities which are computed from the parameters, not directly stated in the parameter file:

>>> print "Wavelengths", par.wavelengths
>>> print "Inclinations in RT mode: ", par.inclinations
Wavelengths [  1.10859065e-01   1.36242824e-01   1.67438785e-01   2.05777785e-01
    2.52895390e-01   3.10801666e-01   3.81966929e-01   4.69427133e-01
    ...
    2.20195083e+03   2.70613864e+03]
Inclinations in RT mode:  [ 45.]

Right now these are calculated only when the parameter file is created and don’t automatically update if you change any parameters. Likewise if you set their values directly nothing is updated for consistency and they’re not used when writing files, so just treat these as read only.

Repeatable parameters for zones and dust properties

Parameters that can be repeated multiple times are stored as lists of dicts. Here’s a model with two density zones:

>>> print len(par.density_zones)
2
>>> print par.density_zones[0]['dust_mass']
0.001

Since dust properties are different for every zone, and each zone can have multiple species of dust, they’re stored within the density zone dicts as another list of dicts. This can lead to some pretty complicated indexing:

>>> print par.density_zones[0]['dust'][0]['aexp']
3.5  # aexp for the first dust species in the first zone
>>> print par.density_zones[2]['dust'][1]['aexp']
2.0  # aexp for the second dust species in the third zone.

As a convenience for the common case of there being only one of these, some shortcuts are defined:

• paramfile.density: The first density_zone in a given model, equivalent to paramfile.density_zones[0]
• paramfile.dust: The first dust grain properties in a given model, equivalent to paramfile.density_zones[0]['dust'][0]
• paramfile.star: The first star in a given model, equivalent to paramfile.stars[0]

Parameter File Input & Output

The parameter file reading code attempts to handle several recent versions of the parameter file format, but this is not fully tested.

Warning

Versions of MCFOST parameter files prior to 2.15 are unlikely to work.

For output, the code should always output the most recent version it’s been updated to handle. Currently this is 2.19.

>>> paramfile.writeto('desired_output_filename.par')  # the output file will be updated to 2.19
>>>                                                   # regardless of the original version read in

Paramfile class detailed documentation

class mcfost.Paramfile(filename=None, directory='./', **kwargs)

Object class interface to MCFOST parameter files

Example:

par = Parfile(‘somefile.par’)

writeto(outname='sample.par')

Write an MCFOST parameter file to disk. Currently outputs v2.17 param files

WARNING: Not all parameters are allowed to vary, just the most useful ones. Lots of the basics are still hard coded. TBD fix later.

Parameters :

outname : string

Output file name