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SMILE is interactive software for studying a variety of 2D and 3D models, including arbitrary potentials represented by a basis-set expansion, a spherical-harmonic expansion with coefficients being smooth functions of radius (splines), or a set of fixed point masses. Its main features include:
LOSSCONE computes the rates of capture of stars by supermassive black holes. It uses a stationary and time-dependent solutions for the Fokker-Planck equation describing the evolution of the distribution function of stars due to two-body relaxation, and works for arbitrary spherical and axisymmetric galactic models that are provided by the user in the form of M(r), the cumulative mass as a function of radius.
Raga (Relaxation in Any Geometry) is a Monte Carlo simulation method for gravitational dynamics of non-spherical stellar systems. It is based on the SMILE software (ascl:1308.001) for orbit analysis. It can simulate stellar systems with a much smaller number of particles N than the number of stars in the actual system, represent an arbitrary non-spherical potential with a basis-set or spline spherical-harmonic expansion with the coefficients of expansion computed from particle trajectories, and compute particle trajectories independently and in parallel using a high-accuracy adaptive-timestep integrator. Raga can also model two-body relaxation by local (position-dependent) velocity diffusion coefficients (as in Spitzer's Monte Carlo formulation) and adjust the magnitude of relaxation to the actual number of stars in the target system, and model the effect of a central massive black hole.
The AGAMA library is a collection of tools for constructing and analyzing models of galaxies. It computes gravitational potential and forces, performs orbit integration and analysis, and can convert between position/velocity and action/angle coordinates. It offers a framework for finding best-fit parameters of a model from data and self-consistent multi-component galaxy models, and contains useful auxiliary utilities such as various mathematical routines. The core of the library is written in C++, and there are Python and Fortran interfaces. AGAMA may be used as a plugin for the stellar-dynamical software packages galpy (ascl:1411.008), AMUSE (ascl:1107.007), and NEMO (ascl:1010.051).
FORSTAND constructs dynamical models of galaxies using the Schwarzschild orbit-superposition method; the method is available as part of the AGAMA (ascl:1805.008) framework. The models created are constrained by line-of-sight kinematic observations and are applicable to galaxies of all morphological types, including disks and triaxial rotating bars.
NIMBLE (Non-parametrIc jeans Modeling with B-spLinEs) inferrs the cumulative mass distribution of a gravitating system from full 6D phase space coordinates of its tracers via spherical Jeans modeling. It models the Milky Way's dark matter halo using Gaia and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Milky Way Survey (DESI MWS) data. NIMBLE includes a basic inverse modeling Jeans routine that assumes perfect and complete data is available and a more complex forward modeling Jeans routine that deconvolves observational effects (uncertainties and limited survey volume) characteristic of Gaia and the DESI-MWS. It also includes tools for generating simple equilibrium model galaxies using Agama (ascl:1805.008) and imposing mock Gaia+DESI errors on 6D phase space input data.