[mesa-users] New public release 9793

[Evan Bauer]

Hello MESA Users,

We are happy to announce a new MESA public release version: 9793. Release notes below.

Cheers,
Evan (on behalf of Pablo, Rich, Josiah, Rob, Aaron, Frank, and Bill)




MESA 9793 - Release Notes
=====================


Binary
-------

Binary module terminal output has been significantly changed to provide more useful information at runtime.


Element Diffusion
-------------------

Option added to simplify the user interface for diffusion classes (diffusion_use_full_net = .true.). This assigns each isotope in the current net to its own diffusion class, circumventing the need to manually specify each isotope that serves as a class representative.

Default solver for the Burgers equations has been changed to properly account for electron degeneracy in white dwarfs. The old solver based on the work of Thoul et al. (1994) for the Sun is still available, but is no longer the default.

The new diffusion solver (diffusion_use_cgs_solver = .true.) now accounts for thermal diffusion terms in the Burgers equations. It includes options to turn off these terms smoothly as a function of electron degeneracy, since they are invalid and usually negligible for WD interiors. With these thermal diffusion terms included for non-degenerate material, this solver is appropriate for use on the main sequence as well as in WDs. Thus, in most circumstances, the user no longer needs to worry about switching between solvers for different types of diffusion problems.

The new diffusion solver also supports radiative levitation now, where before this required using the solver based on Thoul et al. (1994) (as revised by Haili Hu to include extra driving terms from radiative levitation). The user interface remains unchanged.
Note that radiative levitation is limited to isotopes that are supported by OP data for calculating radiative accelerations, so one must be careful to avoid using a class structure involving isotopes that aren’t supported. In particular, radiative levitation with the new diffusion_use_full_net option will cause problems for any net including isotopes not supported by OP.

“diffusion_gamma_full_on/off” has been changed to 150-175 as default, meaning diffusion occurs for all material that has not crystallized.

An option that accounts for Ne22 sedimentation heating in old, cooling WDs is now available.

Minor bug fixed in calculating the ionization states for diffusion classes. This only affected diffusion, and only mattered when background material for diffusion was not hydrogen.

Fixed a bug that could cause timesteps to crash unnecessarily due to stale diff_iters value. (Thanks to Bill Wolf for bug report!)


GYRE
-------

GYRE has been upgraded to 5.0rc6. There are significant changes to GYRE’s input files in this updated version; users should consult example input files, and/or the online documentation, for details. https://bitbucket.org/rhdtownsend/gyre/wiki/Home <https://bitbucket.org/rhdtownsend/gyre/wiki/Home>


pgstar
-------

Pgstar plots now have the option to call a decorator function, set in a users run_star_extras file in a similar way to the other_* functions, this allows additional customization options for all pgplots. See $MESA_DIR/star/other/pgstar_decorator.f90 for an example.

Network plots now have the option to show a colorbar for the abundances.


Rates
------

The default version of JINA reaclib provided with MESA has been updated to reaclib v2.2.  To restore the previous default, use
       jina_reaclib_filename = ‘jina_reaclib_results_20130213default2'
in your star_job inlist. When switching between different reaclib versions, users must either: run $MESA_DIR/empty_caches or set rates_cache_dir in their star_job inlist to a local folder. Otherwise mesa will not use any rates from the new reaclib version that have been cached from a previous version. Running  $MESA_DIR/clean will also clear the caches.

It is now much simpler for a user to specify a custom table providing a weak reaction rate. See the test suite case "custom_rates" for examples of providing user-specified reaction rate tables.


Miscellaneous
---------------

Bug fix for redo_conv_for_dr_lt_mixing_length so that it now applies to central convection zones.

The default opacity files all use gs98 relative metal fractions. (Previously, this was a mix of gn93 and gs98).  As a reminder, these choices are controlled by the star_job options

       kappa_file_prefix
       kappa_lowT_prefix
       kappa_CO_prefix

The star_job options associated with the blend (in Z) between OPAL and HELM and the blend (in T) between ionized and neutral HELM have been refactored.  See the documentation for the controls:

       set_HELM_OPAL_Zs
       Z_all_HELM
       Z_all_OPAL

       set_HELM_ion_neutral_blends
       max_logRho_neutral_HELM
       logT_neutral_HELM
       logT_ion_HELM

While "stella" is now part of the mesa release, it is not yet ready for general use.  Please wait for the next release to begin using it.

A file containing a summary of the changes to inlist defaults is attached. Some internal and experimental controls are not included.



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.mesastar.org/pipermail/mesa-users/attachments/20170531/c4193a4c/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: changes.txt
URL: <https://lists.mesastar.org/pipermail/mesa-users/attachments/20170531/c4193a4c/attachment.txt>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.mesastar.org/pipermail/mesa-users/attachments/20170531/c4193a4c/attachment-0001.html>