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arXiv · 1802.08255

Agama reference documentation

Eugene Vasiliev
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Abstract

Agama (Action-based Galaxy Modelling Architecture) is a software library intended for a broad range of tasks within the field of stellar dynamics. As the name suggests, it is centered around the use of action/angle formalism to describe the structure of stellar systems, but this is only one of its many facets. The library contains a powerful framework for dealing with arbitrary density/potential profiles and distribution functions (analytic, extracted from N-body models, or fitted to the data), a vast collection of general-purpose mathematical routines, and covers many aspects of galaxy dynamics up to the very high-level interface for constructing self-consistent galaxy models. This document serves two purposes. First of all, this is a detailed reference for the library itself. Second, it describes various mathematical and numerical methods that could be applicable in a broader context. These include: (1) one- and multidimensional interpolation using cubic and quintic splines; (2) penalized spline fitting of noisy data and penalized spline density estimation; (3) adaptive rejection sampling from multidimensional probability distributions; (4) computation of gravitational potentials using spherical- and azimuthal-harmonic expansions; (5) Staeckel fudge method for computing action/angle variables; (6) a general discussion about good programming practices.

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Eugene Vasiliev. 2018-02-22. Agama reference documentation. https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08255

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