Modification of the MOOG spectral synthesis codes to account for Zeeman broadening of spectral lines

TL;DR

This paper introduces MOOGStokes, an extension of the MOOG spectral synthesis code, which incorporates Zeeman broadening and polarization effects to better analyze stellar magnetic fields.

Contribution

The paper presents a new version of MOOG, called MOOGStokes, that models polarized radiative transfer including magnetic field effects, enhancing stellar magnetic field studies.

Findings

MOOGStokes accurately models Zeeman broadening and polarization in stellar spectra.

The code's results agree with established polarized radiative transfer codes.

MOOGStokes performs well in both magnetic and non-magnetic scenarios.

Abstract

In an attempt to widen access to the study of magnetic fields in stellar astronomy, I present MOOGStokes, a version of the MOOG one-dimensional LTE radiative transfer code, overhauled to incorporate a Stokes vector treatment of polarized radiation through a magnetic medium. MOOGStokes is a suite of three complementary programs, which together can synthesize the disk-averaged emergent spectrum of a star with a magnetic field. The first element (a pre-processing script called CounterPoint) calculates for a given magnetic field strength, wavelength shifts and polarizations for the components of Zeeman sensitive lines. The second element (a MOOG driver called SynStokes derived from the existing MOOG driver Synth) uses the list of Zeeman shifted absorption lines together with the existing machinery of MOOG to synthesize the emergent spectrum at numerous locations across the stellar disk, accounting for stellar and magnetic field geometry. The third and final element (a post-processing script called DiskoBall) calculates the disk-averaged spectrum by weighting the individual emergent spectra by limb darkening and projected area, and applying the effects of Doppler broadening. All together, the MOOGStokes package allows users to synthesize emergent spectra of stars with magnetic fields in a familiar computational framework. MOOGStokes produces disk-averaged spectra for all Stokes vectors (I, Q, U, and V), normalized by the continuum. MOOGStokes agrees well with the predictions of INVERS10 a polarized radiative transfer code with a long history of use in the study of stellar magnetic fields. In the non-magnetic limit, MOOGStokes also agrees with the predictions of the scalar version of MOOG.