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Welcome to the VarConLib wiki, for instructions on using the Varying Constants Library.

There's not much here yet, but this resource will be expanded over time.

Installing

To clone the VarConLib repository from GitHub onto your computer, use this command:

$ git clone https://github.com/DBerke/varconlib.git

This will create a varconlib directory in the directory you ran the command in, which is the "top level" directory for the code. You may want to create a conda environment to contain the versions of libraries used in VarConLib. Next, run this command from within the varconlib directory just created:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements_dev.txt -e .

This installs VarConLib in "editable" mode, such that your computer will run from the code in that directory substructure, allowing changes you make to be immediately visible the next time you import VarConLib. Although not required, the suggested importing method as:

import varconlib as vcl

as this is used in VarConLib itself.

Running tests after installing

See this page. Most tests can be run simply with $ pytest in the top level directory, but will need some additional data files downloaded to run all tests.

Selecting transitions and transition pairs

See this page.

Preparing spectra

• HARPS: For an explanation of how VarConLib prepares HARPS files, see this page.

Fitting transitions in spectra

• HARPS: For explanation of the find_transitions.py script and how it works with HARPS spectra, see here.

• See this page for an overview of the GaussianFit class which handles the actual fitting of absorption features.

Fitting pair separations across stars

See this page for a description.

Fitting parameters found for transitions and pairs from HARPS solar-analogs sample

The parameters found from fitting transition offsets and pair separations using the stellar, transition, and pair samples of Berke et al. (2022) can be downloaded using the following commands:

$ curl -OL https://www.dropbox.com/s/ojdic6ijfc3mx33/quadratic_transitions_3.0sigma_params.csv
$ curl -OL https://www.dropbox.com/s/da7xmn9cfr87k1w/quadratic_pairs_4.0sigma_params.csv

They're only about 250 and 500 kB in size, respectively. They should go in a directory named fit_params within the output_dir defined in the VarConLib config file.

The same information can be downloaded as serialized data in HDF5 format, but this likely won't work across installations, so this is provided for historical reference only.

$ curl -OL https://www.dropbox.com/s/c8raer80bup2lt7/quadratic_transitions_3.0sigma_params.hdf5.zip
$ curl -OL https://www.dropbox.com/s/uvxc49lmuzwui96/quadratic_pairs_4.0sigma_params.hdf5.zip

They're ~30 and ~60 MB in size zipped, and ~100 and ~200 MB unzipped, respectively.