FORSTAND: A New Schwarzschild Dynamical Modeling Code for Galaxies of All Morphological Types

Schwarzschild modeling is widely used for constraining the masses of central massive black holes and the internal kinematics of galaxies by modeling observed kinematical data. In recent years there has been an explosion of IFU kinematical surveys of galaxies which make it possible, in principle, to model a large number of galaxies and learn about their internal structures and dynamics. Although 60% of disk galaxies have rapidly rotating, elongated central bars, till now no Schwarzschild code has been capable of modeling barred galaxies. Our new, publicly available code FORSTAND, is the first Schwarzschild code that is applicable to galaxies of all morphological types. It is also highly computationally efficient, making it possible to run a large number of models rapidly, thereby allowing for a much better exploration of parameter space. Using mock datasets constructed from N-body simulations we show that the pattern speed of a bar can be derived with an accuracy of 10-20% regardless of orientation (assuming the 3D shape is known). This presentation will illustrate various unique features of the code and also discuss future improvements and enhancements that are planned.