.. _usage: Is **Wind-AE** the right tool for me? ========================================= **Wind-AE** is well-suited for users interested in **quickly estimating mass loss rates** or outflow structure. Outflow structure includes bulk temperature and per-species ionization fractions as a function of radius, so can be easily translated into approximating and **predicting observables and transits**, including metastable helium (He 10830:math:`\AA`) transits, though a He transit module is not yet included. Precise modeling of lower atmosphere (:math:`\lesssim 100` microbar) is considered necessary for highly accurate transit models, but Wind-AE can be easily coupled to lower atmosphere photochemistry models whose outputs (e.g., radius, temperature, abundances, ionization fractions, etc. at 1 microbar) can be fed into Wind-AE as inputs. .. note:: *If you are interested in outflow structure:* Past the Coriolis turning radius (a few planetary radii) 3D physics dominates, so **Wind-AE** does not integrate past that point. **Wind-AE** also makes simplifying assumptions about the region below the wind-launch radius (~10 nanobars). Because **Wind-AE** runs on the order of seconds to minutes, it can be (and has been) used to **model planet evolution**. **Wind-AE** can model: ---------------------- - Multiple atomic species - X-ray physics (secondary ionizations and K-shell ionization cross-sections for relevant metals) - Both low and high stellar XUV flux - **Heating & Cooling**: Ionization heating, bolometric heating & cooling (negligible in wind), PdV cooling (work done due to expansion of gas), radiative / atomic line cooling (Lyman-\alpha, OI, OII, OIII, CI, CII), recombination cooling **Wind-AE** does not (currently) include: ----------------------------------------- - **Magnetic fields** - **Time dependence** - **Diffusion/drag** - the atomic species set by the user are assumed to be entrained in the outflow and in thermal equilibrium. This is an appropriate assumption for species below the `crossover mass `_ and a warning will be raised. - **Heating & Cooling**: - Conduction (warning raised if relevant, **planned**) - H3+ line cooling (not planned) - Fe & Ca line cooling (relevant at high Z only, **planned**) - Free-free cooling (warning raised if relevant, not planned) - Multiple ionization states of the same species (**planned**) See Broome et al. (submitted) for more details. Other tools and models: ----------------------- - Want a rapid H/He model with power-law approximated XUV spectra? Check out `ATES `_ (`Caldiroli et al. 2021 `_) - Do you want to set the mass loss rate (:math:`\dot{M}`) yourself or want an EUV isothermal Parker wind outflow model that runs in nanoseconds? Check out `p-winds `_ (`Dos Santos et al. 2022 `_) - Do you want to use p-winds and get transit models for metals via Cloudy? Check out `Sunbather `_ (`Linssen et al. 2024 `_) - Want to leverage Cloudy and the hydrodynamic code PLUTO for more thorough XUV-irradiated, but slightly more expensive calculations? Check out `TPCI `_ (`Salz et al. 2015`) - That sound great, but you prefer to code in Python over C/C++? Check out `pyTPCI `_ (`Riley, Zhang, & Bean 2025 `) - Do you care about diffusion throughout the wind? Check out `AIOLIS `_ (`Schulik & Booth, 2022 `) - Want to model the lower atmosphere in more detail? Check out CETIMB (Koskinen et al. 2022) - Just want a grid of mass loss rates for pure-Hydrogen, low-flux-EUV-irradiated planets? See `Kubyshkina & Fossati `_ - Want a grid of mass loss rates for pure-Hydrogen, high-flux-XUV-irradiated planets? See `Owen & Jackson (2012) `_ .. note:: Want your model added to this list or to update the short bio? Email mabroome@ucsc.edu