NE2001p: A Native Python Implementation of the NE2001 Galactic Electron Density Model

Abstract

The Galactic electron density model NE2001 describes the multicomponent ionized structure of the Milky Way interstellar medium. NE2001 forward models the dispersion and scattering of compact radio sources, including pulsars, fast radio bursts, AGNs, and masers, and the model is routinely used to predict the distances of radio sources lacking independent distance measures. Here we present the open-source package NE2001p, a fully Python implementation of NE2001. The model parameters are identical to NE2001 but the computational architecture is optimized for Python, yielding small (<1%) numerical differences between NE2001p and the Fortran code. NE2001p can be used on the command-line and through Python scripts available on PyPI. Future package releases will include modular extensions aimed at providing short-term improvements to model accuracy, including a modified thick disk scale height and additional clumps and voids. This implementation of NE2001 is a springboard to a next-generation Galactic electron density model now in development.

arXiv comment3 pages, 1 figure, code available at https://pypi.org/project/mwprop/

References in corpus (8)

• A New Electron Density Model for Estimation of Pulsar and FRB Distances
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars
• Accurate distances to Galactic globular clusters through a combination of Gaia EDR3, HST and literature data
• Microarcsecond VLBI pulsar astrometry with PSR$\pi$ II. parallax distances for 57 pulsars
• FAST Globular Cluster Pulsar Survey: Twenty-Four Pulsars Discovered in Fifteen Globular Clusters
• A comparison of Galactic electron density models using PyGEDM
• Electron Density Structure of the Local Galactic Disk
• TRAPUM discovery of thirteen new pulsars in NGC 1851 using MeerKAT

Cited by in corpus (7)

• NE2025: An Updated Electron Density Model for the Galactic Interstellar Medium
• The Pulsar Science Collaboratory: Multi-Epoch Scintillation Studies of Pulsars
• Deep Synoptic Array Science: Searching for Long Duration Radio Transients with the DSA-110
• H I absorption line and anomalous dispersion in the radio pulses of PSR B1937+21
• Checking the Empirical Relations with the Current Localized Fast Radio Bursts
• A magnetar outburst with atypical evolution: the case of Swift J1555.2-5402
• Detection of Partial Coherence due to Multipath Propagation for FRB 20220413B with CHIME/FRB