SpecpolFlow: a new software package for spectropolarimetry using Python
Abstract
Spectropolarimetry, the observation of polarization and intensity as a function of wavelength, is a powerful tool in stellar astrophysics. It is particularly useful for characterizing stars and circumstellar material, and for tracing the influence of magnetic fields on a host star and its environment. Maintaining modern, flexible, and accessible computational tools that enable spectropolarimetric studies is thus essential. The SpecpolFlow package is a new, completely Pythonic workflow for analyzing stellar spectropolarimetric observations. Its suite of tools provides a user-friendly interface for working with data from an assortment of instruments and telescopes. SpecpolFlow contains tools for spectral normalization and visualization, the extraction of Least-Squares Deconvolution (LSD) profiles, the generation and optimization of line masks for LSD analyses, and the calculation of longitudinal magnetic field measurements from the LSD profiles. It also provides Python classes for the manipulation of spectropolarimetric products. The SpecpolFlow website includes an array of tutorials that guide users through common analysis cases using the software. SpecpolFlow is distributed as a free, open-source package, with fully documented tools (via an API and command line interface) which are actively maintained by a team of contributors.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.18476,
title = {SpecpolFlow: a new software package for spectropolarimetry using Python},
author = {Colin P. Folsom and Christiana Erba and Veronique Petit and Shaquann Seadrow and Patrick Stanley and Tali Natan and Bonnie Zaire and Mary E. Oksala and Federico Villadiego Forero and Robin Moore and Marisol Catalan Olais},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.18476},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Submitted to the Journal of Open Source Software