The program runs under the
operating system LINUX as well as in a DOS Window/DOS command shell under
Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP. It should also run under other UNIX
operating systems and CygWin; however, this has not been thoroughly
tested.
WD2006 is a Fortran-based wrapper around the Wilson-Devinney
program WD (=LC+DC) developed and distributed by Robert E. Wilson (University of Florida)
to compute eclipsing binary light curves. The term light curves is here used in the general sense of
eclipsing binary observables; see, Kallrath & Milone (1999) among other
observables, and to analyze data, i.e., to fit light curves or
merely to compute a synthetic light curve. WD2006 has tight link with the original
WD code, and it calls the WD subroutine DC and other subroutines called subsequently. Therefore, it is compatible regarding the astrophysics. The package itself is still maintained and further
developed solely by Josef Kallrath. The documentation has been improved
significantly and, from 2005 on, is maintained by J. Kallrath and E. F.
Milone.
It should be understood that modeling eclipsing binaries and solving inverse
problems in such a context is a major research effort and requires some
expertise to use the software effectively. Wherever possible, great effort
has been invested to make the software as stable as possible.
WD2006 has been developed within the framework of a several
preceding software packages named LCCTRL, WD93, WD95, WD98, and WD2002. WD2002 was the first
release that combined all previous developments and included all stellar
atmospheres improvements added by E. F. Milone and C. R. Stagg, and was also
the first release which ran under LINUX and other UNIX operation systems.
WD2006 adds simulated annealing as a minimization algorithm, and
produces tables of absolute dimensions, and, in particular, LaTeX output
tables. It also supports and embeds a Fortran subroutine for the computation
of limb-darkening coefficients as provided by Walter Van Hamme.
The procedure for creating the flux files is described in the appendix along
with changes to the atmospheres option in WD programs. The use of
the flux ratio files that make use of Kurucz atmospheres models are coded in
Subroutine ATM2000 (which replaces subroutine ATM) by C. R. Stagg.
We provide the LaTeX source file, docu.tex, in the WD2006/DOCUMENT directory to encourage the new user to add appropriate
comments, corrections or extension directly into this file. That way, we can
eliminate problems in a short time. We also appreciate feedback in case you
experienced difficulties.
A final remark: Currently, there are at least three programs available based on the Wilson-Devinney approach and program. At first, and always the most up-to-date in terms of the astrophysics, is the original WD program with a lot of functionality
added over the years; Bob Wilson is actively developing and maintaining this program. Most analyses of eclipsing binary stars are performed with this program. Second, the WDxxxx program described on this web page. This program runs fully under both Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems, and there is a about a dozen of papers in which this program has been used for eclipsing binary analyses. Third, the GUI wrapper PHOEBE developed by Andrej Prsa. This program is handy and nice to use and has an active user group (it is not clear whether the GUI works with Microsoft operating systems). The final conclusion is: it depends on one's needs and working style preferences which program to chose.
WD2006 can be downloaded as the password-proteced
file wd2006.zip [left mouse click]. The zip file contains the executable for Microsoft Windows, documentation, test examples, but
not the source code.
Please contact the author and ask for the password to unzip
the zip-file.
