New in v12.11

New features

• New Models:
  
  

  ismdust	Extinction due to silicate and graphite grains
  olivineabs	Extinction due to olivine grains
  agnslim	AGN super-Eddington accretion model.
  zkerrbb	Redshifted version of kerrbb
  thcomp	Thermally comptonized continuum convolution model.
  logconst	Convert normalization to log units
  log10con	Convert normalization to log10 units
  bwcycl	Self-consistent cyclotron line model.
  clmass	Mixing model assuming constant gravitational mass in each shell.
  monomass	Mixing model parameterized by differences of mass densities in adjacent shells.
  nfwmass	Mixing model with NFW gravitation potential.

• Updated Models:
  • Using the new 201 tabulated temperatures v3.0.9 AtomDB files for apec models. These CEI files reduce potential interpolation problems (see http://atomdb.org/interpolation/index.php). The interpolation scheme can be switched between log and linear interpolation using xset APECLOGINTERP. Another option to reduce interpolation errors is provided by xset APECUSENEI which switches all calculation of CEI spectra through the NEI code. This is slower but can be used to check calculations. To recover the older v3.0.9 files use xset APECROOT 3.0.9_51. If you do this and also want to use NEI models then you also need to use xset NEIAPECROOT 3.0.9.
  • The diskline, rdblur, kdblur, kdblur2, laor, laor2, kerrconv, kerrdisk have all been sped up using a new FFT-based convolution routine.
  • The xscat model has been updated to extend the range of the Rext parameter for MRN and ZDABAS options from 0-199 arcsec to 0-236 arcsec.

• Major overhaul to code calculating statistics. Main visible change is that each spectrum can have a different fit statistic but there is only a single test statistic.

• Added support for responses which have been split into parts with different resolution. This is very effective for responses which have high resolution but long tails down to low energies. In the case of the XRISM Resolve instrument this will provide speed increases of up to an order of magnitude. Note that if a file contains multiple response extensions then XSPEC will read and use them all unless a response extension is specified using e.g. resp.rsp{n}.

Bug fixes

All bug fixes to v12.10.1 released as patches are included in v12.11.