Kuibit: Analyzing Einstein Toolkit simulations with Python

Abstract

In the era of gravitational-wave astronomy, general-relativistic simulations of compact objects play a role of paramount importance. These calculations can be performed with the Einstein Toolkit, an open-source and community-supported software for numerical-relativity and relativistic astrophysics. The code comes with multiple solvers for Einstein's equations and for the equations of general-relativistic magneto-hydrodynamics, along with a series of useful diagnostics. However, analyzing the output of the Einstein Toolkit can be a challenging task. Usually, the process involves a series of technical obstacles, like combining data from different restarts or working with HDF5 files. Here, we present kuibit, a Python library that takes care of all these low-level details (and many other more) and that provides high-level, intuitive, representations of the data. Kuibit ships with a wide range of features that include full support for 1-3D ASCII and HDF5 grid data, time and frequency series, gravitational waves, and apparent horizons. With kuibit, users can inspect most of the content of a simulation with just a few lines of code. Importantly, kuibit is designed to be a code for the community: it is user-friendly and does not require any proprietary software to run, it has documentation and examples, and it is openly developed with emphasis on extensibility and maintainability.