Optimized gyrosynchrotron algorithms and fast codes

TL;DR

This paper introduces fast, approximate algorithms for gyrosynchrotron emission calculations, significantly reducing computation time while maintaining accuracy, thereby enhancing astrophysical radio observation diagnostics.

Contribution

The authors develop and provide accessible, fast approximate codes for gyrosynchrotron emission, improving computational efficiency over traditional exact methods.

Findings

Computation time reduced by several orders of magnitude.

Approximate codes maintain errors within a few percent.

Codes are available as executable modules callable from IDL.

Abstract

Gyrosynchrotron (GS) emission of charged particles spiraling in magnetic fields plays an exceptionally important role in astrophysics. In particular, this mechanism makes a dominant contribution to the continuum solar and stellar radio emissions. However, the available exact equations describing the emission process are extremely slow computationally, thus limiting the diagnostic capabilities of radio observations. In this work, we present approximate GS codes capable of fast calculating the emission from anisotropic electron distributions. The computation time is reduced by several orders of magnitude compared with the exact formulae, while the computation error remains within a few percent. The codes are implemented as the executable modules callable from IDL; they are made available for users via web sites.