Ambiguity in multiple continuum methods about chiantipy HOT 9 CLOSED

I think this was an attempt to mimic the CHIANTI way of doing things but I did it very early on. The 2 Emiss methods are probably only rarely used and should just populate different dictionaries. I think the best way to resolve this is to create different dictionaries. It is easy to recover from the change if we do it this way.

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Ok so then it there would only be two methods:

• freeFree
• freeBound
  and depending on the kwargs, each would populate one of two dictionaries per method:
• FreeFreeEmiss or FreeFree
• FreeBoundEmiss or FreeBound

Another option would just be to add these as different keys to the same dictionary. This might be a bit cleaner. Or, alternatively, just let the user multiply by the ionization equilibrium and/or abundance since this information is already available to them. So then each method only returns one dictionary with one piece of information.

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I think it is best if ChiantiPy takes care of multiplying by the abundance and ionization equilibrium. Otherwise, it causes the user a certain amount of dog-work that can be easily avoided

from chiantipy.

Ok that seems to make sense.

So just to make sure I understand this correctly:

• the methods suffixed with "Loss" include ionization equilibrium and abundance but not emission measure
• the methods suffixed with "Emiss" do not include the ionization equilibrium or the abundance or the emission measure
• the methods without any suffix include the ionization equilibrium, abundance, and emission measure

Is this correct?

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right now we have the methods freeFree, freeFreeEmiss, freeFreeLoss, an so on for freeBound

freeFreeEmiss calculates the free-free spectrum a for a given ion --it does not include the abundance, ionization equilibrium or emission measure.
freeFree calcuates the spectrum for a give ion and includes the abundance and ionization equilibrium and emission measure as specified - the emission measure is specified in the continuum init method.
freeFreeLoss calcuates the energy loss of a given ion and includes the abundance, ionization equilibrium BUT NOT the emission measure. It probably should include the EM if is specified.

A lot of editing needs to be done in the Continuum class, for example many of the defaults or 0 (zero) for False or None and they should be explicity be set to that and then check how things propagate through the code.

Does this make sense?

from chiantipy.

Ok I see now.

So then how do these methods compare with the output of the CHIANTI IDL continuum methods? Presumably, if one was to add the output of continuum.freeFree (continuum.freeBound) for all ions, you should get the same answer as that produced by FREEFREE (FREEBOUND)?

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ChiantiPy is not meant to be a duplicate of CHIANTI. Another issue is that I have not implemented the relativistic free-free cross-sections of Itoh so the free-free is the non-relativistic result based on Sutherland.

from chiantipy.

Ok. Just trying to understand the differences between how IDL and ChiantiPy do the continuum calculation.

I think some of my confusion stems from the fact that the docstrings for a lot of the continuum methods are a bit confusing. It looks like I was last to edit these so I seem to only have myself to blame! This is all a bit more clear now so I will try to clean those up a bit and clarify some of the confusion soon.

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Closed by #114

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