LOTUS: A (Non-) LTE Optimization Tool for Uniform Derivation of Stellar Atmospheric Parameters

Abstract

Precise fundamental atmospheric stellar parameters and abundance determination of individual elements in stars are important for all stellar population studies. Non–local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE; hereafter NLTE) models are often important for such high precision, however, can be computationally complex and expensive, which renders the models less utilized in spectroscopic analyses. To alleviate the computational burden of such models, we developed a robust 1D, NLTE fundamental atmospheric stellar parameter derivation tool, LOTUS, to determine the effective temperature T eff, surface gravity log g , metallicity [Fe/H], and microturbulent velocity v mic for FGK-type stars, from equivalent width (EW) measurements of Fe i and Fe ii lines. We utilize a generalized curve of growth method to take into account the EW dependencies of each Fe i and Fe ii line on the corresponding atmospheric stellar parameters. A global differential evolution optimization algorithm is then used to derive the fundamental parameters. Additionally, LOTUS can determine precise uncertainties for each stellar parameter using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm. We test and apply LOTUS on a sample of benchmark stars, as well as stars with available asteroseismic surface gravities from the K2 survey, and metal-poor stars from the Gaia-ESO and R-Process Alliance surveys. We find very good agreement between our NLTE-derived parameters in LOTUS to nonspectroscopic values on average within T eff = ±30 K, and log g = ±0.10 dex for benchmark stars. We provide open access of our code, as well as of the interpolated precomputed NLTE EW grids available on Github (the software is available on GitHub 3 3 https://github.com/Li-Yangyang/LOTUS under an MIT License, and version 0.1.1 (as the persistent version) is archived in Zenodo) and documentation with working examples on the Readthedocs book.