The PhotoDissociation Region Toolbox: Software and Models for Astrophysical Analysis
The PhotoDissociation Region Toolbox: Software and Models for Astrophysical Analysis
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Date
2023-01-15
Authors
Pound, Marc W.
Wolfire, Mark G.
Advisor
Citation
Pound, M.W. and Wolfire, M.G., 2023, Astronomical Journal, 165:25
Abstract
The PhotoDissociation Region Toolbox provides comprehensive, easy-to-use, public software tools and models
that enable an understanding of the interaction of the light of young, luminous, massive stars with the gas and dust
in the Milky Way and in other galaxies. It consists of an open-source Python toolkit and photodissociation region
(PDR) models for analysis of infrared and millimeter/submillimeter line and continuum observations obtained by
ground-based and suborbital telescopes, and astrophysics space missions. PDRs include all of the neutral gas in the
interstellar medium where far-ultraviolet photons dominate the chemistry and/or heating. In regions of massive
star formation, PDRs are created at the boundaries between the H II regions and neutral molecular cloud, as
photons with energies 6 eV < hν < 13.6 eV photodissociate molecules and photoionize metals. The gas is heated
by photoelectrons from small grains and large molecules and cools mostly through far-infrared (FIR) fine-structure
lines like [O I] and [C II]. The models are created from state-of-the art PDR codes that include molecular freezeout;
recent collision, chemical, and photorates; new chemical pathways, such as oxygen chemistry; and allow for
both clumpy and uniform media. The models predict the emergent intensities of many spectral lines and FIR
continuum. The tools find the best-fit models to the observations and provide insight into the physical conditions
and chemical makeup of the gas and dust. The PDR Toolbox enables novel analysis of data from telescopes such as
the Infrared Space Observatory, Spitzer, Herschel, the Stratospheric Terahertz Observatory, the Stratospheric
Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite, the Atacama Pathfinder
Experiment, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and the JWST.
Notes
This manuscript describes an astrophyics data analysis software package, that allows researchers to compare observations to state-of-the-art theoretical/numerical models to determine characteristics of photodissociation regions in interstellar space.
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Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/