GalaPy, the highly optimised C++/Python spectral modelling tool for galaxies -- I. Library presentation and photometric fitting

Abstract

Fostered by upcoming data from new generation observational campaigns, we are about to enter a new era for the study of how galaxies form and evolve. The unprecedented quantity of data that will be collected, from distances only marginally grasped up to now, will require analysis tools designed to target the specific physical peculiarities of the observed sources and handle extremely large datasets. One powerful method to investigate the complex astrophysical processes that govern the properties of galaxies is to model their observed spectral energy distribution (SED) at different stages of evolution and times throughout the history of the Universe. To address these challenges, we have developed GalaPy, a new library for modelling and fitting SEDs of galaxies from the X-ray to the radio band, as well as the evolution of their components and dust attenuation/reradiation. GalaPy incorporates both empirical and physically-motivated star formation histories, state-of-the-art single stellar population synthesis libraries, a two-component dust model for attenuation, an age-dependent energy conservation algorithm to compute dust reradiation, and additional sources of stellar continuum such as synchrotron, nebular/free-free emission and X-ray radiation from low and high mass binary stars. GalaPy has a hybrid implementation that combines the high performance of compiled C++ with the flexibility of Python, and exploits an object-oriented design. It generates models on the fly without relying on templates, and exploits fully Bayesian parameter space sampling. In this first work, we introduce the project and showcase the photometric SED fitting tools already available to users. The library is available on the Python Package Index (PyPI) and comes with extensive online documentation and tutorials.

41 pages, 31 figures, 7 tables, to be published on A&A, links to documentation and PyPI available in the PDF, comments are very welcome

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Value Added Catalog of physical properties of more than 1.3 million galaxies from the DESI Survey
• Molecular gas and dust properties in $z>7$ quasar hosts
• Ultra High-Redshift or Closer-by, Dust-Obscured Galaxies? Deciphering the Nature of Faint, Previously Missed F200W-Dropouts in CEERS
• MeerKAT radio continuum imaging of nearby star-forming spirals in the NGC 6221, NGC 3256/3263, and NGC 2434 galaxy groups
• Survey of (sub)mm water masers in low-mass star-forming regions
• SPAN: A cross-platform Python GUI software for optical and near-infrared spectral analysis
• The Photometric Analysis of the Environment Around Two Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies at $z\sim 2$