The chart of rapid population synthesis codes

A simplified chart of the current state-of-the-art population synthesis codes. 

Chart Interpretation

The river of the maps indicates detailed stellar evolution codes and stellar evolution tracks:

• STARS (Eggleton et al., 2011, Astrophysics Source Code Library)
• MESA (Paxton et al., 2011, ApJS, 192, 3)
• PARSEC (Bressan et al., 2012, MNRAS, 427, 127)
• FRANEC (Degl'Innocenti et al., 2008, Astrophys.Space Sci., 316, 25)
• BASTI (Pietrinferni et al., 2013, A&A, 558, 46)
• GENEC (Eggenberger et al., 2008, Astrophys.Space Sci., 316, 43)
• BRUSSELS (De Donder & Vanbeveren, 2004,  New Astron.Rev. 48, 861)
• BEC (Heger et al., 2000,  ApJ, 528, 368)

The cities represent rapid population synthesis codes and their vicinity to a given (or multiple) rivers indicates that the stellar evolution recipes are taken from that stellar evolution code or track.  

In particular, the codes in the BSE island follow stellar evolution by  fitting equations based on the Pols+98 stellar tracks made with the code STARS:

• BSE (Hurley et al., 2002, MNRAS, 329, 897)
• MOBSE (Giacobbo N. & Mapelli M., 2018, MNRAS, 480, 2011)
• BSEEMPH (Tanikawa, A., 2022, AJ, 926, 83)
• STAR TRACK (Belczynski K., et al., 2008, ApJS, 174, 223)
• COSMIC (Breivik K. et al., 2020, ApJ, 898, 71)
• BINARY_C (Izzard R. G., 2006, A&A, 460, 565)
• COMPAS (Riley J. et al., 2022, ApJS, 258, 34)
• SEBA (Portegies Zwart S. F. & Verbunt F., 1996, A&A, 309, 179)
• BSELEVELC (Kamlah A. W. H. et al., 2022, MNRAS, 511, 4060)

Within the BSE island there are the Triple Peaks mountains referring to code implementing also formalisms for triple or multiple system evolutions. The one I am aware of all uses the BSE-like formalism for stellar and binary evolution and they are represtend by towers in the mountains:

• TSE (Stegmann et al., 2022, MNRAS, 516, 1406)
• TRES (Toonen et al., 2017, AAS, 229, 326)
• MSE (Hamers et al., 2021, MNRAS, 502, 4479)
• TRIPLE_C (Hamers et al., 2013, MNRAS, 430, 2262)

The cities on the Interpolator lakes are codes that include stellar evolution by interpolating a set of stellar tracks, so in principle, they are not connected to any specific stellar evolution codes. The cities are anyway arranged to reflect stellar evolution models that have been mostly used in connection with the code (e.g. PARSEC and MESA for SEVN, MESA for MIST, BRUSSELS for COMBINE):

• SEVN (Iorio et al., 2023, MNRAS, 524, 426)
• COMBINE  (Kruckow M. et al.,  2018, MNRAS, 481, 1908)
• METISSE (Agrawal P. et al., 2020, MNRAS, 497, 4549)
• MINT (Mirouh et al., 2023, MNRAS, 524, 3978)
• TRILEGAL (Girardi L., et al., 2005, 436, 895)

The other cities present on the map indicate the codes:

• STARBUST99 (Leitherer, C. et al., 1999, ApJS, 123, 3)
• IBIS (Tutukov A. & Yungelson L., 1996, MNRAS, 280, 1035)
• SCENARIO_MACHINE (Lipunov V. M. et al., 1996, A&A, 310, 489)

The STARBUST99 code focuses mostly on modelling the spectroscopic properties of galaxies and uses the Geneva stellar evolution models. For the the last two codes, I was not able to find a direct connection to any of the known stellar evolution codes, therefore I put them somewhere close to a Glacier and I put a Dragon to refer to the famous sentence "hic sunt dracones" to indicate my ignorance about the details of the two codes.

The three codes represented by ships are population synthesis codes that hybrid between detailed stellar and binary evolution models and population synthesis. They are located on the rivers related to the detailed codes they are based on:

• BRUSSELS pop synth (Donder & Vanbeveren, 2004,  New Astron.Rev. 48, 861)
• BPASS (Eldridge et al., 2017, PASA, 34, e058)
• POSYDON (Fragos T. et al., 2023, ApJS, 264, 45)

Disclaimer

The map represents an oversimplification for the sake of visualisation. The order of names, their fontsizes and relative locations, and possible Typos and errors do not have any specific meaning and do not "hide" any personal opinion of the authors. 

If you want to suggest changes, additions or ask to remove a given code please send me an email at giuliano.iorio.astro@gmail.com