Mixin to compute forces and second potential derivatives numerically¶

class galpy.potential.NumericalPotentialDerivativesMixin(kwargs)[source]

Mixin to add numerical derivatives to a Potential class, use as, e.g.,

class PotWithNumericalDerivs(Potential,NumericalPotentialDerivativesMixin):
def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
NumericalPotentialDerivativesMixin.__init__(self,kwargs) # *not* **kwargs!
# Remainder of initialization
...

def _evaluate(self,R,z,phi=0.,t=0.):
# Evaluate the potential

# All forces and second derivatives then computed by NumericalPotentialDerivativesMixin


to add numerical derivatives to a new potential class PotWithNumericalDerivs that only implements the potential itself, but not the forces. The class may implement any of the forces or second derivatives, all non-implemented forces/second-derivatives will be computed numerically by adding this Mixin

The step used to compute the first (force) and second derivatives can be controlled at object instantiation by the keyword arguments dR, dz, dphi (for the forces; 1e-8 default) and dR2, dz2, and dphi2 (for the second derivaives; 1e-4 default)

__init__(kwargs)[source]

Initialize self. See help(type(self)) for accurate signature.