BRUCE / KYLIE

BRUCE and KYLIE are a pair of Fortran 77 codes for synthesizing spectra of pulsating stars.

Overview

BRUCE constructs a point-sampled model for the surface of a rotating, gravity-darkened star, and then subjects this model to perturbations arising from one or more non-radial pulsation modes. Departures from adiabaticity can be taken into account, as can the Coriolis force through adoption of the so-called traditional approximation.

BRUCE writes out a time-sequence of perturbed surface models. This sequence is read in by KYLIE, which synthesizes disk-integrated spectra for the models by co-adding the specific intensity eminating from each visible point toward the observer. The specific intensity is calculated by interpolation in a large temperature-gravity-wavelength-angle grid of pre-calculated intensity spectra.

Important: For historical reasons, I've not been able to distribute intensity spectra grids with the codes. Recognizing that this is a big barrier against their adoption, I'm putting the finishing touches to a complete rewrite of the codes. In addition to numerous improvements, the new version includes freely distributable spectral grids. Please contact me if you would like to try out a pre-release version of the new codes.

Documentation

The rather-outdated user guide for BRUCE and KYLIE can be found in Appendix F of my PhD thesis, which I've excerpted as PostScript and PDF files.

Download

The source code for BRUCE and KYLIE is freely available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The table below lists the different releases, and links to a tar.gz archive for each.

File Date Comments
bruce-2.84-4.tar.gz 2004-08-09
  • Current stable version
  • Fixes a minor bug relating to the calculation of the visibility of perturbed grid points.
  • Improved checking of input files.
  • Added a new switch, NO_CENTRIFUGAL_DEFORMATION, which allows the rotation-induced centrifugal deformation to be suppressed.
  • Added a new parameter, CRITICAL_VELOCITY_FRACTION, as an alternative method of specifying the equatorial rotation velocity.
  • See the file CHANGES for a full list of modifications.
bruce-2.84-3.tar.gz 2001-08-27
  • Fixes a bug which led to the incorrect calculation of the radial component of the surface gravity. This bug had a number of consequences: in particular, it meant that the equilibrium surface normal, gravity and temperature were incorrect at mid-latitudes (the equator and pole are unaffected). However, these errors will only be significant in stars which are rotating at a significant fraction of the break-up rate, and therefore deviate significantly from being spherical.
  • Modified the diagnostic output, so that values for the minimum and maximum logarithmic surface gravity are written out (as lg_Max and lg_Min, respectively).
  • See the file CHANGES for a full list of modifications.
bruce-2.84-2.tar.gz 2001-01-24
  • Fixes a bug which led to the incorrect calculation of the theta-component of the surface area/normal perturbations (due to the lack of a 1/sqrt(2*pi) factor). This bug will affect calculations for all l>1 modes; however, the contribution of surface perturbations towards line-profile variability is negligible, and therefore the bug isn't serious for the spectroscopic modelers. As far as I know, I'm the only person at the moment doing photometry with BRUCE (using a custom back-end replacement for KYLIE); therefore, I'm not too worried about this development. Photometry from BRUCE now appears to be in good agreement with results calculated using Dziembowski's (1977) semi-analytical formulation.
  • See the file CHANGES for a full list of modifications.
bruce-2.84-1.tar.gz 2000-11-30
  • Fixes a bug which led to the incorrect calculation of surface area/normal perturbations for radial, m=0,l>0 and (l-|m|)>1 modes when rotation effects are not included, and all modes when rotation effects are included (using the MATRIX_DIMENSION parameter). This bug was related to the horizontal velocity field problem mentioned below, and was overlooked in version 2.83-2.
  • The tpgprof3.f subroutine has been removed from the distribution, since users have to supply their own version anyway (and I think its presence was confusing).
  • Included a (crude) treatment of pressure perturbations: use the new PRESSURE_EFFECTS parameter in the #fields command.
  • See the file CHANGES for a full list of modifications.
bruce-2.83-2.tar.gz 2000-08-03
  • Fixes two bugs which led to incorrect calculation of horizontal velocity fields for m=0,l>0 and (l-|m|)>1 modes when rotation effects are not included, and all modes when rotation effects are included (using the MATRIX_DIMENSION parameter).
  • Syntax of input files has been changed slightly to improve consistency.
  • See the file CHANGES for a full list of modifications.
bruce-2.83-1.tar.gz 2000-07  
bruce-2.8.tar.gz 1999-07  
bruce-2.71.tar.gz 1997-08
  • First version released
  • Loads of bugs...
Updated 2009-10-14 14:30:55