Last modified: December 2025

URL: https://cxc.cfa.harvard.edu/sherpa/ahelp/xsbvgadem.html
AHELP for CIAO 4.18 Sherpa

xsbvgadem

Context: models

Synopsis

The XSPEC bvgadem model: plasma emission, multi-temperature with gaussian distribution of emission measure.

Syntax

xsbvgadem

The xsbvgadem model is an additive model component.

Description

The model is described at [1] . The set_xsabund and get_xsabund functions change and return the current settings for the relative abundances of the metals. See the xsapec documentation for settings relevant to the APEC model (i.e. when switch=2 ).


Example

>>> create_model_component("xsbvgadem", "mdl")
>>> print(mdl)

Create a component of the xsbvgadem model and display its default parameters. The output is:

mdl
   Param        Type          Value          Min          Max      Units
   -----        ----          -----          ---          ---      -----
   mdl.Tmean    frozen            4         0.01           20        keV
   mdl.Tsigma   thawed          0.1         0.01          100        keV
   mdl.nH       frozen            1        1e-06        1e+20      cm^-3
   mdl.He       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.C        frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.N        frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.O        frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Ne       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Na       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Mg       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Al       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Si       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.S        frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Ar       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Ca       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Fe       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Ni       frozen            1            0           10           
   mdl.Redshift frozen            0       -0.999           10           
   mdl.Velocity frozen            0            0        10000       km/s
   mdl.switch   frozen            2            0            3           
   mdl.norm     thawed            1            0        1e+24           

ATTRIBUTES

The attributes for this object are:

Attribute Definition
Tmean The mean temperature for the gaussian emission measure distribution, in keV.
Tsigma The sigma of the temperature distribution for the gaussian emission measure, in keV.
nH H density, in cm^-3.
He, C, N, O, Ne, Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, Ar, Ca, Fe, Ni The abundance relative to Solar.
Redshift The redshift of the plasma.
Velocity The gaussian sigma for the velocity broadening (in km/s) which is only used when switch > 1.
switch If 0, the mekal code is run to evaluate the model; if 1 then interpolation of the mekal data is used; if 2 then interpolation of APEC data is used; if 3 then SPEX data. See [1] for more details. This parameter can not be thawed.
norm The normalization of the model.

References

[1]

Changes in CIAO

Added in CIAO 4.17

XSPEC version

CIAO 4.18 comes with support for version 12.14.0k of the XSPEC models. This can be checked with the following:

% python -c 'from sherpa.astro import xspec;
print(xspec.get_xsversion())'
12.14.0k

Bugs

See the bugs pages on the Sherpa website for an up-to-date listing of known bugs.

See Also

models
xsbgadem, xsbvvgadem