nrutils is a low-level suite for working with Numerical Relativity data (i.e. gravitational waveforms) from binary black hole mergers.

Table of Contents

1. Installation
2. Working with Numerical Relativity simulation catalogs
3. Usage Examples

Installation (OSX+Linux)

There are several ways you can install nrutils

Install direct from GitHub:

If you just want to start using nrutils

pip install git+https://github.com/llondon6/nrutils_dev.git

Or clone, then install:

If you want to have local copies of examples and workflows

git clone https://github.com/llondon6/nrutils_dev.git
pip install .

Or clone, then install in editable mode:

If you want to develop nrutils and useful if installing in a virtual environment

git clone https://github.com/llondon6/nrutils_dev.git
pip install -e .

Working with Numerical Relativity simulation catalogs

nrutils uses a class based system where the simulation (i.e. its related metadata) is encapsulated a "simulation catalog entry" or "scentry" class. General purpose waveforms are encapsulated by the gwf (graviational waveform) class, but the user will most likey be interested in the gwylm class, which loads desired spherical harmonic multipoles, and then (semi-automatically) performs low level processing of data (e.g. strain calculation, ffts, windowing, plotting). In the context of the gwylm class, individual multipoles are gwf objects.

To get a sense of how these concepts work togerther please see the core usage example. NOTE that you will need to configure or build catalog files before trying to run this example. Please see sections below for how to do this.

• core_ipython_example.ipynb

Working with catalog files

If you installed nrutils in editable mode then you should edit the files in the cloned repository otherwise you should edit the files installed in your python environment.

• nrutils/config/bam.template -> nrutils/config/bam.ini
• nrutils/config/sxs.template -> nrutils/config/sxs.ini
• nrutils/config/bam_gw150914_followup.template -> nrutils/config/bam_gw150914_followup.ini

Building your own catalog

This is done using the command scbuild() to create a database of the NR simulations. (Documentaion incomplete)

The related example ipython notebook is:

• core_ipython_example.ipynb

Using a stock catalog or one shared by a friend

The related example ipython notebook is:

• reconfigure_catalog_example.ipynb

Examples

The best way to learn what's in nrutils is to brows through the package contents and skim over the comments. The second best way to figure out what's going on is to skim though the example ipython notbooks located in the examples folder:

• Usage Examples