Refractive Indices For Virga Exoplanet Cloud Model

Difference between v1 and v2? 

The optical constants were updated based on Batalha et al (in prep). The default values and references are located in the IOR Factory. Additionally the specific radii for which the mieff parameters were computed have also changed. Therefore if using Virga V1 we recommend using the Mieff's computed in V2. 

Additional Details

These files are used to compute parameterized cloud models with the Virga Exoplanet Cloud Model. The documentation is available here for specifically how these files are included into virga.

1. REFRACTIVE INDICES: (.refrind): contain the refractive indices of each condensate species. If you are running cloud models utilizing this data, please cite the corresponding source for each species listed below. All files are 4 columns structured as : 

index, wavelength (micron), real part, imaginary part. 

Virga reads in these files in this routine but you can simply use this python code:

filename = "H2O.refrind"
idummy, wave, nn, kk = np.loadtxt(open(filename,'rt').readlines(), unpack=True, usecols=[0,1,2,3])#[:-1]

2. MIE PARAMETERS: (.mieff): There are specific tutorials and functions in virga that will guide you through computing these on your own. However, we provide them here for completeness. The program that calculates these is demonstrated here. Note that each Mie parameters are averaged 6 points within the wavelength bin. You can use this function here to parse the data. Or, you can simply read the mieff files with this code: 

import pandas as pd
gas = "H2O"
df = pd.read_csv(gas+".mieff",names=['wave','qscat','qext','cos_qscat'], delim_whitespace=True)

CITATIONS TO REFERENCE FOR EACH SPECIES (See Table 1 Batalha et al. submitted):