A new implementation of the Humlicek algorithm for the calculation of the Voigt profile function

A new implementation of Humlicek's algorithm for approximating the Voigt profile function is proposed and compared with several other implementations with respect to computational speed. On scalar computers this new implementation is considerably faster than other implementations by more than a factor 3.3 on average. However, on the vector computer the acceleration between the new implementation and a fully vectorized implementation of Schreier is only between 1.2 and 1.8, depending on the region of the x,y-space under consideration. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.