spectroxide: A code package for computing cosmic microwave background spectral distortions
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866915961929465856 |
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| author | Baker, Ethan Liu, Hongwan Mishra-Sharma, Siddharth |
| author_facet | Baker, Ethan Liu, Hongwan Mishra-Sharma, Siddharth |
| contents | We present spectroxide, a code package for computing cosmic microwave background spectral distortions in which all ${\sim}14{,}500$ lines of Rust code, Python interface, and ${\sim}400$ automated tests were written by an AI assistant (Claude Code) under human physicist supervision. The solver evolves the photon Boltzmann equation under Compton scattering, double Compton emission, and Bremsstrahlung from $z \sim 5 \times 10^6$ to the present, computing spectral distortions from arbitrary heat and photon injection within this redshift range. No fully open-source code of this kind is publicly available; we validate against analytic limits, published spectra, and publicly available precomputed Green's function tables. We document the development as a case study in AI-assisted scientific computing, highlighting how domain expertise caught physics bugs (incorrect dimensional prefactors, near-cancellation errors) that evaded the full automated test suite, and provide recommendations for best practices in human--AI collaborative development of scientific software. We make spectroxide publicly available on GitHub. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_24838 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | spectroxide: A code package for computing cosmic microwave background spectral distortions Baker, Ethan Liu, Hongwan Mishra-Sharma, Siddharth Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Artificial Intelligence High Energy Physics - Phenomenology We present spectroxide, a code package for computing cosmic microwave background spectral distortions in which all ${\sim}14{,}500$ lines of Rust code, Python interface, and ${\sim}400$ automated tests were written by an AI assistant (Claude Code) under human physicist supervision. The solver evolves the photon Boltzmann equation under Compton scattering, double Compton emission, and Bremsstrahlung from $z \sim 5 \times 10^6$ to the present, computing spectral distortions from arbitrary heat and photon injection within this redshift range. No fully open-source code of this kind is publicly available; we validate against analytic limits, published spectra, and publicly available precomputed Green's function tables. We document the development as a case study in AI-assisted scientific computing, highlighting how domain expertise caught physics bugs (incorrect dimensional prefactors, near-cancellation errors) that evaded the full automated test suite, and provide recommendations for best practices in human--AI collaborative development of scientific software. We make spectroxide publicly available on GitHub. |
| title | spectroxide: A code package for computing cosmic microwave background spectral distortions |
| topic | Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Artificial Intelligence High Energy Physics - Phenomenology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24838 |