POLARIS: POLArized RadIation Simulator

is a 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer code that

• allows to simulate intensity and polarization of light emerging from analytical astrophysical models as well as complex magneto-hydrodynamic simulations on various grids

• is capable to perform dust heating, -emission, -scattering, -grain alignment, line radiative transfer, and synchrotron simulations

• calculates synthetic intensity and polarization maps

• makes use of a full set of physical quantities (density, temperature, velocity, magnetic field distribution, and dust grain properties as well as different sources of radiation) as input

Requirements

The following packages are required for the installation:

• gcc (preferred), icc, or clang++

• cmake (preferred), or ninja

• Python version >= 3.6 (packages: numpy, setuptools)

Installation (Linux)

Open a terminal/console and move into the POLARIS directory:

cd /YOUR/POLARIS/PATH/

To install POLARIS, run the installation script:

./compile.sh -f

For the first installation, the option -f is required to install the CCfits and cfitsio libraries. Alternatively, these libraries can be installed with a package manager (root permissions are required):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libccfits-dev libcfitsio-dev

If these packages are installed on the system, simply install POLARIS via

./compile.sh

For more information, type:

./compile.sh -h

POLARIS can now be executed from any newly opened terminal/console. To use it in already open terminals/consoles, execute the following command to update the environmental paths:

source ~/.bashrc

HINT: Please refer to the manual for installation on macOS. An installer to use POLARIS with Windows is not available yet.

Use POLARIS

For a guide how to run first simulations, please take a look in our quickstart.

For more information about POLARIS and its capabilities, please take a look in our manual.

If you use results from POLARIS in a publication, please cite Reissl et al. (2016) or Reissl et al. (2018). If line radiative transfer and/or Zeeman simulations are used, please cite Brauer et al. (2017) as well.

Project structure

.
├── bin                                      # Directory to store POLARIS executable
├── ci                                       # CI test script (only for testing purposes)
├── ext                                      # Catch2 test framework for unit-tests (only for testing purposes)
├── img                                      # Images and logos
├── input                                    # Input data used by POLARIS
│   ├── dust_cs                              # Dust cross sections files in the default POLARIS format
│   ├── dust_nk                              # Dust refractive index files in the default POLARIS format
│   ├── gas                                  # Gas database files in the LAMDA format (including Zeeman files)
│   └── interstellar_radiation_field.dat     # Spectral energy distribution of the ISRF
├── lib                                      # CCfits and cfitsio libraries
├── projects                                 # Output directory to store simulation results and examples
│   ├── disk                                 # Exemplary disk model
│   ├── test                                 # Models for testing purposes
│   └── CommandList.cmd                      # List of available POLARIS commands
├── src                                      # Source files of the POLARIS code
├── tools                                    # PolarisTools directory
│   ├── polaris_tools_custom                 # User-definable modules for PolarisTools
│   ├── polaris_tools_modules                # Modules for PolarisTools
│   ├── polaris-convert.in                   # Source file for the polaris-convert tool
│   ├── polaris-gen.in                       # Source file for the polaris-gen tool
│   └── setup.py                             # Setup script for PolarisTools
├── AUTHORS.md
├── LICENSE.md
├── QUICKSTART.md
├── compile.sh                               # Compile script to install POLARIS (Linux)
├── README.md
├── manual.pdf
└── quickstart.pdf

Copyright

POLARIS is licensed under GPLv3.

Copyright © 2018 Stefan Reissl

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

For a list of corresponding authors, please see AUTHORS.

contact: polaris@astrophysik.uni-kiel.de