Definitions of mass and light profiles

In order to bring together different modeling codes and ensure models are consistent with others, a necessary part of COOLEST is the definition of a set of mass and light profile parametrizations.

Note

In the current python interface of the standard, mass and light profiles are implemented in two separate subpackages: coolest.template and coolest.api. This allows to separate the template file system from the plotting & analysis API. The availability of these implementations are specified for each profile in the documentation pages below.

The different profiles are split into two broad categories:

• mass profiles to describe lens potentials, surface mass densities and other lensing-related quantities;

• light profiles to describe surface brightness distributions, including extended (galaxies) or point-like (stars, quasars) objects.