ARES v2 - new features and improved performance

TL;DR

ARES v2 introduces new features like automatic radial velocity correction and continuum determination, significantly enhancing performance and maintaining compatibility with previous versions through improved automation and parallel processing.

Contribution

The paper presents ARES v2, an upgraded spectral analysis tool with new automatic features and improved performance using parallel computation.

Findings

Automatic radial velocity correction achieved with cross-correlation.

Automatic continuum determination is consistent and more efficient.

Performance improved through parallel computation with OpenMP.

Abstract

Aims: We present a new upgraded version of ARES. The new version includes a series of interesting new features such as automatic radial velocity correction, a fully automatic continuum determination, and an estimation of the errors for the equivalent widths. Methods: The automatic correction of the radial velocity is achieved with a simple cross-correlation function, and the automatic continuum determination, as well as the estimation of the errors, relies on a new approach to evaluating the spectral noise at the continuum level. Results: ARES v2 is totally compatible with its predecessor. We show that the fully automatic continuum determination is consistent with the previous methods applied for this task. It also presents a significant improvement on its performance thanks to the implementation of a parallel computation using the OpenMP library.