Triaxial Gaussian potential

class galpy.potential.TriaxialGaussianPotential(amp=1.0, sigma=5.0, b=1.0, c=1.0, zvec=None, pa=None, glorder=50, normalize=False, ro=None, vo=None)

Potential of a triaxial Gaussian (Emsellem et al. 1994):

\[\rho(x,y,z) = \frac{\mathrm{amp}}{(2\pi\,\sigma)^{3/2}\,b\,c}\,e^{-\frac{m^2}{2\sigma^2}}\]

where \(\mathrm{amp} = GM\) is the total mass and \(m^2 = x^2+y^2/b^2+z^2/c^2\).

__init__(amp=1.0, sigma=5.0, b=1.0, c=1.0, zvec=None, pa=None, glorder=50, normalize=False, ro=None, vo=None)

Initialize a triaxial Gaussian potential.

Parameters:

• amp (float or Quantity, optional) – Amplitude to be applied to the potential (default: 1); can be a Quantity with units of mass or Gxmass.

• sigma (float or Quantity, optional) – Gaussian dispersion scale.

• b (float, optional) – y-to-x axis ratio of the density.

• c (float, optional) – z-to-x axis ratio of the density.

• zvec (numpy.ndarray, optional) – If set, a unit vector that corresponds to the z axis.

• pa (float or Quantity, optional) – If set, the position angle of the x axis.

• glorder (int, optional) – If set, compute the relevant force and potential integrals with Gaussian quadrature of this order.

• normalize (bool or float, optional) – If True, normalize the potential (default: False). If a float, normalize the potential to this value.

• ro (float or Quantity, optional) – Distance scale for translation into internal units (default from configuration file).

• vo (float or Quantity, optional) – Velocity scale for translation into internal units (default from configuration file).

Notes

• 2020-08-18 - Started - Bovy (UofT)