The only problem is that the necessary equations are not provided.
That's right .. there is all this great data .. and no equations.
Oh, they say - See the references. .. what a joke.
You know, maybe this stuff is in some textbook I don't have .. but !!
Therefore, I tried to use other references I found online. Just to make this fun, those references don't agree. Some have errors, others appear to be radically different. We're not talking "improvements" .. these are totally different equations.
Simple band broadening
When the temperature and pressure of a gas change, the widths of the spectral lines change. There are no equations that describe this .. however, the Lorentz approximation is close enough for most uses. (The simple fact of using a computer to make the computations may introduce as much error / uncertainty do to sampling and round off problems.)
I used a lot of references, but finally decided to base my code on Appendix B of AFCRL Atmospheric Absorption Line Parameters Compilation (1973), mainly because of problems trying to handle the lower state energy field in the HITRAN data. Note that part of this reference (a pdf file) is an image and part is searchable text. As a result, if you can't find something by searching, then you must read the entire document. (This is a primary source - and it can not be searched.) Also, since some parts of the document are a photograph of poorly printed and broken characters, it is frequently a challenge to determine exactly what is being said. With regular text (prose), it is not too bad. But with equations and computer code (where single character errors are important), well .. it is more difficult than you would think.
The important equations for this example are (in Pascal)
CS1 := (T0 - Temperature)/(T0 * Temperature * 0.69503563);
// inside a loop
dp.Adjusted_Intensity := dp.Line_Intensity * CS2 * exp(-dp.lower_state_energy * CS1) ;
|
CS1 = (T0-T)/(T0*T*0.5946) S(I)=S(I)*CS2(M)*EXP(-EDP(I)*CS1) |
0.5946 |
| Description | Image from pdf file | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal Size |
| Magnified | 422%
| Another 5 and 6
|
| |
So I interpreted the code as
CS1 = (T0-T)/(T0*T*0.6946) |
Well the references (plural) clearly state that the constant is k/hc. (In the box below, values and units are from Google.)
k = Boltzmann constant = 1.3806503 × 10-23 m2 kg s-2 K-1 h = Planck's constant = 6.626068 × 10-34 m2 kg / s c = Speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s k/hc = 69.50356804 m-1 K-1 k/hc = 0.6946 used in the supplied program |
EDP(I) is the "lower state energy" and provided per spectral line in the HITRAN database. A quick check of the provided data formats did not revel what the appropriate dimensions should be. (They most definitely should have been there.) A "search" of the reference also provided NO information.
As I noted above, the reference pdf file is partly a scanned document and partly text. As a result, my "search" (using the pdf tools) found nothing because they can not search the "scanned" parts of the document. When I took time to actually read the document, I found the necessary information on page 2 (page 8 of the pdf).
the energy of the lower state, E"(cm-1) |
E" = energy of the lower state expressed in wavenumbers. |
At this point, it was time to compare their value with mine.
mine = 0.6950356804 theirs = 0.6946 |
Well .. that appears to be a 0.08% error .. close enough for this. (Actually 0.06% to 0.09% depending on how it is computed. Yes .. there ARE different ways. Compare the inverse. Compare after computing EXP(-EDP(I)*CS1).)
Well .. there is more. In the text of the document, it shows (page 3, pdf 9, equation 3)
1.439 E" (T-Ts)/(T * Ts) |
1/1.439 = 0.694927033 -> 0.6949 |
Note that I found this only after I had questions about where a constant came from .. particularly why there was a difference of 100 that I could not explain.
Needless to say, without the example code, I would have missed all of this.
I have no way to know. All I can say is that my plots look "reasonable". Oh, and that I have spent - a lot of time - trying to verify the equations I am using. But this is the best I can do without additional help. (hint, hint)