# Spherical potentials¶

class galpy.potential.SphericalPotential.SphericalPotential(amp=1.0, ro=None, vo=None, amp_units=None)[source]

Base class for spherical potentials.

Implement a specific spherical density distribution with this form by inheriting from this class and defining functions:

• _revaluate(self,r,t=0.): the potential as a function of r and time;
• _rforce(self,r,t=0.): the radial force as a function of r and time;
• _r2deriv(self,r,t=0.): the second radial derivative of the potential as a function of r and time;
• _rdens(self,r,t=0.): the density as a function of r and time (if not implemented, calculated using the Poisson equation).
__init__(amp=1.0, ro=None, vo=None, amp_units=None)[source]

NAME:

__init__

PURPOSE:

initialize a spherical potential

INPUT:

amp - amplitude to be applied to the potential (default: 1); can be a Quantity with units that depend on the specific spherical potential

amp_units - (‘mass’, ‘velocity2’, ‘density’) type of units that amp should have if it has units (passed to Potential.__init__)

ro=, vo= distance and velocity scales for translation into internal units (default from configuration file)

OUTPUT:

(none)

HISTORY:

2020-03-30 - Written - Bovy (UofT)