mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

spectroxide: A code package for computing cosmic microwave background spectral distortions

arXiv 2604.24838 ↗First posted 27 Apr 2026astro-ph.CO astro-ph.IM cs.AIcited by 1

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Abstract (arXiv)

We present spectroxide, a code package for computing cosmic microwave background spectral distortions in which all ~14,500 lines of Rust code, Python interface, and ~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 ~ 5 × 106 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.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 0 of its 73 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Apr 2026.

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