ajwheeler / Korg.jl

fast 1D LTE stellar spectral synthesis
https://ajwheeler.github.io/Korg.jl/
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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$\alpha_{5000}$ and line opacity in M stars #310

Closed ajwheeler closed 1 month ago

ajwheeler commented 2 months ago

In Korg, by default, the formal solution (radiative transfer) uses $\tau{5000}$, the optical depth at 5000 Å. In order to do this it must calculate the absorption coefficient at the same wavelength, $\alpha{5000}$.

At present, it ignores contributions to $\alpha_{5000}$ from lines. This is an unproblematic choice, except for M stars, where you get line blanketing across the visible.

I think the right way to handle this is to use the line opacity when it's available (when the linelist encompasses 5000 Å), and to not worry about it (for now) when it isn't. Plots to come.

ajwheeler commented 2 months ago

As with many detail of how RT is done (see #257), this impacts the continuum more than the rectified flux. (It's defintiely still important for both though. (And, as a side note, it's interesting to see that RT choices in general are crucial for cool stars, easily at the multi percent level.)

image image

At slightly warmer Teff, things are less dicey, but still a but dicey: image image

ajwheeler commented 1 month ago

Here's what this looks like in the IR: image image

ajwheeler commented 1 month ago

Closed by #313