Decomposing Light Curves

mica2 can decompose the echoing light curve into components corresponding to each Gaussian component in the transfer function, via supplying an option “-d” and rerun mica based on previously obtained posterior samples,

mpiexec -n np ./mica2 param/param        # normal mica analysis and generate posterior samples
mpiexec -n np ./mica2 param/param -d     # decompose the light curve

Note that the second command does not redo sampling, instead, it only decompose the light curve. The results are output to files named as “data/pline.txt_xx_comp1”, where “xx” is the number of Gaussians and “comp1” means the first Gaussian component.

mica2 provides a python script to plot the decomposed light curves. Supply the script the option file (param/param) and run the script as

python plotdecomp.py --param param/param

(Top) The transfer function with two Gaussians. (Center) Continuum light curve. (Bottom) Emission line light curve and its decomposition into two components according to the two-component transfer function.