Data formats

Waveform data

Waveform data is loaded by the WaveformDataReader plugin:

gwpv.paraview_plugins.WaveformDataReader.WaveformDataReader()

Read waveform data from an HDF5 file.

This plugin currently assumes the data in the ‘Subfile’ is stored in the SpEC waveform file format. It is documented in Appendix A.3.1 in the 2019 SXS catalog paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04831). Specifically:

  • Each mode is stored in a dataset named ‘Y_l{l}_m{m}.dat’. So the structure of the HDF5 file is:

    {FileName}/{Subfile}/Y_l{l}_m{m}.dat

    The subfile should contain at least the (2,2) mode (named Y_l2_m2.dat).

  • For a typical SpEC simulation you would read the modes from the ‘rhOverM_Asymptotic_GeometricUnits_CoM.h5’ file and the ‘Extrapolated_N2.dir’ subfile.

  • Each ‘Y_l{l}_m{m}.dat’ dataset has three columns:

    1. Time

    2. r * Re(h_lm)

    3. r * Im(h_lm)

    The ‘Time’ column should be the same for all datasets. It will only be read from the (2,2) mode dataset.

Trajectory data

Trajectory data is loaded by the TrajectoryDataReader plugin:

gwpv.paraview_plugins.TrajectoryDataReader.TrajectoryDataReader()

Read trajectory data from an HDF5 file.

This plugin currently assumes the data in the ‘Subfile’ is stored in the SpEC apparent horizon file format. It is documented in Appendix A.3.2 in the 2019 SXS catalog paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04831). Specifically:

  • The HDF5 file should contain the following dataset:

    {FileName}/{Subfile}/{CoordinatesDataset}

    It should have four columns: Time, and the three coordinates of the trajectory.

  • For a typical SpEC simulation you would read the trajectory data from the ‘Horizons.h5’ file and one of the ‘AhA.dir’, ‘AhB.dir’, or ‘AhC.dir’ subfiles. The dataset is named ‘CoordCenterInertial.dat’.

Horizons

Apparent horizon shapes are loaded from Paraview files that SpEC generates. Look for files named ‘AhA.pvd’, ‘AhB.pvd’, or ‘AhC.pvd’. They contain the deformed apparent horizon surfaces over time. The surfaces will automatically be time-interpolated and smoothed.