SPEX Reference manual (PDF) - SRON

2.2 Ascdump: ascii output of plasma properties 13
2.2 Ascdump: ascii output of plasma properties
Overview
One of the drivers in developing SPEX is the desire to be able to get insight into the astrophysics
of X-ray sources, beyond merely deriving a set of best-fit parameters like temperature or
abundances. The general user might be interested to know ionic concentrations, recombination
rates etc. In order to facilitate this SPEX contains options for ascii-output.
Ascii-output of plasma properties can be obtained for any spectral component that uses the
basic plasma code of SPEX; for all other components (like power law spectra, gaussian lines,
etc.) this sophistication is not needed and therefore not included. There is a choice of properties
that can be displayed, and the user can either display these properties on the screen or write it
to file.
The possible output types are listed below. Depending on the specific spectral model, not all
types are allowed for each spectral component. The keyword in front of each item is the one
that should be used for the appropriate syntax.
plas: basic plasma properties like temperature, electron density etc.
abun: elemental abundances and average charge per element.
icon: ion concentrations, both with respect to Hydrogen and the relevant elemental abundance.
rate: total ionization, recombination and charge-transfer rates specified per ion.
rion: ionization rates per atomic subshell, specified according to the different contributing processes.
pop: the occupation numbers as well as upwards/downwards loss and gain rates to all quantum
levels included.
elex: the collisional excitation and de-excitation rates for each level, due to collisions with
electrons.
prex: the collisional excitation and de-excitation rates for each level, due to collisions with
protons.
rad: the radiative transition rates from each level.
two: the two-photon emission transition rates from each level.
grid: the energy and wavelength grid used in the last evaluation of the spectrum.
clin: the continuum, line and total spectrum for each energy bin for the last plasma layer of
the model.
line: the line energy and wavelength, as well as the total line emission (photons/s) for each line
contributing to the spectrum, for the last plasma layer of the model.
con: list of the ions that contribute to the free-free, free-bound and two-photon continuum
emission, followed by the free-free, free-bound, two-photon and total continuum spectrum,
for the last plasma layer of the model.