Units

The ‘units’ parameter category contains parameters specifying the unit system used by CONCEPT. This system of units is used both internally and for output.


unit_length

Description

Specifies the base length unit to use

Default

'Mpc'

Elaboration

Internally, all dimensional values (be it lengths or otherwise) are represented as bare floating-point numbers. The number 1.0 then corresponds to some length. This length is what this parameter specifies.

Example 0

Use kiloparsec as the base length unit:

unit_length = 'kpc'

Caution

Note that unlike when using units when defining other parameters, here 'kpc' is used as a str. This is because here we want the symbolic meaning of a ‘kiloparsec’, whereas in other places what we are after is its numeric value (which really is not defined prior to specifying unit_length).

Example 1

Many other codes make use of units like \(\text{Mpc}/h\) or \(\text{kpc}/h\), where \(h \equiv H_0/(100\, \text{km}\, \text{s}^{-1}\, \text{Mpc}^{-1})\) and \(H_0\) is the Hubble constant. Specifying simply 'Mpc/h' as unit_length will not work however, since h itself can only be inferred from H0 once the numeric value of Mpc has been established, which itself depends on unit_length. To bypass this issue, we can use

unit_length = 'Mpc/0.67'

given that h = 0.67, corresponding to H0 = 67*km/(s*Mpc).


unit_time

Description

Specifies the base time unit to use

Default

'Gyr'

Elaboration

Internally, all dimensional values (be it times or otherwise) are represented as bare floating-point numbers. The number 1.0 then corresponds to some time. This time is what this parameter specifies.

Example 0

Use seconds as the base time unit:

unit_time = 's'

Example 1

Use the same base time unit as is (implicitly) used in CLASS:

unit_time = 'Mpc/c'

unit_mass

Description

Specifies the base mass unit to use

Default

'10¹⁰ m☉'

Elaboration

Internally, all dimensional values (be it masses or otherwise) are represented as bare floating-point numbers. The number 1.0 then corresponds to some mass. This mass is what this parameter specifies.

Example 0

Use the same base mass unit as is (implicitly) used in CLASS (at least in the background module):

unit_mass = '3/(8 π G) c² Mpc'

Note

In specifying the symbolic unit, we are allowed to be fancy as above. We could equivalently use e.g.

unit_mass = '119366.2073189215*light_speed**2*pc/G_Newton'