[Stellar-discuss] new version of MUSE

[Simon Portegies Zwart]

Highly esteemed MUSEicians,

It has been quite a while that we started with the MUSE (A
Multiphysics Software Environment for Modeling Dense Stellar Systems)
By now we have a fully working environment with one stellar dynamics,
two hydrodynamics, one stellar evolution and a binary evolution
prescription. Soon more will follow. At the moment, the main
ingredients are incorporated in a framework in which the gravity part,
the stellar evolution and the hydrodynamics parts are called
subsequently. The scheduler is still quite simple, but with the
working framework we are in a state of improving the individual
ingredients as well as improving the calling sequence, i.e: the
scheduler.

All works quite nicely with Python as a glue language. Each separate
program will receive a Python 'wrapper' through which the information
exchange between that particular part of the code and the scheduler
will be arranged. At the moment the interface is not standardized yet,
but things work currently quite nicely.

We also changed to a new web based WIKI system for the maintainence of
muse and the source code can be downloaded via a 'subversion'
management tool. The latest version can be found at:
http://london.science.uva.nl:8000/muse

At the moment we limit access for upload, but download is unlimited
and anonymous. We currently limit the upload of patches or new source
material until the interface has stable and final structure.  If you
have anything to include in MUSE or if you want direct access to the
source please ask me.

Our timeline is as follows:
In the next few weeks we expect to finalize the interface structure, and
in the mean while we aim at having two packages for each physics flavor
(gravity, evolution, hydrodynamics, scheduler). Once this objective is
reached we will start writing the MUSE paper.
Currently missing from the MUSE wish-list are:
-One additional gravational N-body integrator and
-one stellar evolution code.

Anyone who feels confident in writing a simple toy stellar evolution of
gravitational integrator (even if it is a treecode, Gaseous, FP or MC
code) is welcome to contribute. Any other contributions is also welcomed.
This is an open source/open knowledge project and everybody's
contributions are very much welcomed.

I hope that your enjoy paying around with muse.

Sincerely yours,
Simon Portegies Zwart and Beanndan O Nuallain
  on behalf of all museisians.