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updated tutorials + renamed rst files
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CalystaT committed Aug 24, 2023
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- Density Functional Theory
- DFT
- electrostatic potentials
- galactic dynamics
- milky way
- electron density
authors:
- name: Adrian M. Price-Whelan
orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
- name: Calysta A. Tesiman
orcid: 0009-0008-7784-4320
equal-contrib: true
affiliation: "1, 2" # (Multiple affiliations must be quoted)
- name: Author Without ORCID
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# Statement of need

`Gala` is an Astropy-affiliated Python package for galactic dynamics. Python
enables wrapping low-level languages (e.g., C) for speed without losing
flexibility or ease-of-use in the user-interface. The API for `Gala` was
designed to provide a class-based and user-friendly interface to fast (C or
Cython-optimized) implementations of common operations such as gravitational
potential and force evaluation, orbit integration, dynamical transformations,
and chaos indicators for nonlinear dynamics. `Gala` also relies heavily on and
interfaces well with the implementations of physical units and astronomical
coordinate systems in the `Astropy` package [@astropy] (`astropy.units` and
`astropy.coordinates`).

`Gala` was designed to be used by both astronomical researchers and by
students in courses on gravitational dynamics or astronomy. It has already been
used in a number of scientific publications [@Pearson:2017] and has also been
used in graduate courses on Galactic dynamics to, e.g., provide interactive
visualizations of textbook material [@Binney:2008]. The combination of speed,
design, and support for Astropy functionality in `Gala` will enable exciting
scientific explorations of forthcoming data releases from the *Gaia* mission
[@gaia] by students and experts alike.
When assessing the potential utility of novel semiconducting devices (p-n juntions,
heterostructures, surface terminations) through simulation, an understanding of the
variation in the electrostatic potential and electron density across the system is key.
However, extraction and useful presentation of this data from the raw output of the
simulation can prove cumbersome and often requires the use of visualisation software followed
by manual data extraction. This can result in bottlenecks in high throughput screening projects,
where the same data extraction procedure is repeatedly applied to large databases of candidate structures.

To address this, the ``Macrodensity`` package has been developed as a VASP, FHI-AIMS and
GULP post-processing tool. The package contains functions that enable the user to format
the data from the VASP LOCPOT and CHGCAR files, the FHI-AIMS *.cube file, and GULP *.out
file into physically meaningful quantities, which can then be plotted for user interpretation.
The code has been used to rapidly generate data for these publications: 1,2, amongst others.

# Mathematics

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