1 Introduction

The idea behind this thorn was to decompose GFs on 2D spheres and 3D spherical shells in terms of spin-weighted spherical harmonics and Chebyshev or Legendre polynomials in radius. This was used for waveform extraction, compression of 3D data for visualization and CCE. The code uses more “collocation” points than spectral functions. The idea here was to try to smooth the data by using a least-squares fit to obtain the spectral coefficients. This thorn provides aliased functions to perform the decomposition. This will also dump the Cauchy metric.

2 Physical System

3 Numerical Implementation

4 Using This Thorn

4.1 Dumping Cauchy Data for CCE

The following is a section of a parfile appended to an ordinary Cauchy evolution run (see the par/ directory for the complete parfile)

ActiveThorns="SphericalHarmonicDecomp"

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::extract_spacetime_metric_every=32
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_radii=3
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::EM_Rin[0]=18
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::EM_Rout[0]=22
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::EM_Rin[1]=47
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::EM_Rout[1]=53
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::EM_Rin[2]=94
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::EM_Rout[2]=106
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_l_modes=7
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_n_modes=7
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_mu_points=41
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_phi_points=82
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_x_points=28

In this example we will extract the metric on 3 different shells (num_radii), the first between r=18 and r=22, the second between r=47 and r=53, and the third between r=94 and 106. The idea here is to make the shell small enough that we can accurately calculate the radial derivatives of the metric function, while also large enough that we can smooth out the grid noise. We decompose the metric functions in terms of 7 \(\ell \) modes (num_l_modes=7 or all modes from \(\ell =0\) to \(\ell =6\), the m modes are automatically set) and 7 radial modes (num_n_mode=7). The grid functions are evaluated at 41 points in mu (mu=cos(theta)), 82 points in phi, and 28 points in radius. Minimally, we would need the number of angular points to be equal to the number of angular spectral functions \(\ell ^2 + 2\ell \), in this case we have many more angular modes (\(41*82\)) than angular spectral functions. Similarly num_x_points must be greater than num_n_modes. The number of n modes is set by the need to accurately model the radial derivative of the mertric functions in the spherical shell. The larger the difference between EM_Rin[] and EM_Rout[] the more points required. The number of l modes is determined by the accuracy requiremnts of the final CCE waveoform. in this case, choosin num_n_modes=7 is marginally acceptable.

Note that the parameters

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::Rin
SphericalHarmonicDecomp::Rout

are not used for CCE metric extraction. These parameters affect the 3D decomposition of GFs using the

SphericalHarmonicDecomp_3D_Decompose aliased function mechanism

4.2 Aliased functions

SphericalHarmonicDecomp provides a mechanism for other thorns to decompose GFs either on 2D surfaces or 3D shells via aliased functions. These two functions should be called in GLOBAL mode.

CCTK_INT  SphericalHarmonicDecomp_3D_Decompose (
       CCTK_POINTER_TO_CONST _GHp,
       CCTK_POINTER_TO_CONST _name,
       CCTK_INT re_gindx,
       CCTK_INT im_gindx,
       CCTK_INT spin )

e.g.

  SphericalHarmonicDecomp_3D_Decompose(cctkGH, "Psi4",
       CCTK_VarIndex("WeylScal4::Psi4r"),
       CCTK_VarIndex("WeylScal4::Psi4i"), -2);

CCTK_INT FUNCTION sYlm_DecomposeField(\
               CCTK_POINTER_TO_CONST IN cctkGH,\
               CCTK_POINTER_TO_CONST IN name,\
               CCTK_INT IN re_gindx,\
               CCTK_INT IN im_gindx,\
               CCTK_REAL IN radius,\
               CCTK_INT IN spin)

e.g.

  SphericalHarmonicDecomp_DecomposeField(cctkGH, "Psi4",
       CCTK_VarIndex("WeylScal4::Psi4r"),
       CCTK_VarIndex("WeylScal4::Psi4i"), 50, -2);

4.3 Parameters

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::extract_spacetime_metric_every how often
               (in iterations) should the metric be decomposed and dumped.

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::out_dir=""  Output directory for all output,
                                usually set to "", which causes the
                                thorn to use IO::out_dir

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::max_spin=2  Largest spin value. For most configuration
                             this should be set to 2.

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_l_modes How many l modes. This affects all
                           output. Note this is not lmax-1 in general.
                           For spin-weight 2 GF, lmax will be num_l_modes+2-1

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_mu_points number of points in the mu (cos(theta))
                           direction. Affects all output.

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_phi_points number of points in phi direction.
                                Affects all output.

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::num_x_points number of points in x (radial) direction.
                       Affects all 3D output including MetricDecomp

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::Rin inner radius of 3D shell. Only affects fields
                      dumped using aliased function mechanism

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::Rout outer radius of 3D shell. Only affects fields
                      dumped using aliased function mechanism

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::EM_Rin an array of Rins used for the CCE Metric
                             extraction

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::EM_Rout an array of Routs used for the CCE Metric
                             extraction

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::output_m_max limit on the maximum abs(m) dumped to
                output. These options are useful if you don’t want to
                dump all the m modes from -l to l.

SphericalHarmonicDecomp::output_l_max limit on the maximum l dumped to
                output. This option is useful if you want the maximum
                l dumped to output to be independent of the spin of the
                GF.

4.4 Obtaining This Thorn

4.5 Basic Usage

4.6 Special Behaviour

4.7 Interaction With Other Thorns

4.8 Examples

4.9 Support and Feedback

5 History

5.1 Thorn Source Code

5.2 Thorn Documentation

5.3 Acknowledgements

References

6 Parameters

out_dir	Scope: private	STRING
Description: output directory
Range		Default: (none)
	Empty stting -> use IO::out_dir
.+	directory name

7 Interfaces

General

Implements:

sphericalharmonicdecomp

Provides:

sYlm_DecomposeField to

sYlm_DecomposeField_3D to

8 Schedule

This section lists all the variables which are assigned storage by thorn PITTNullCode/SphericalHarmonicDecomp. Storage can either last for the duration of the run (Always means that if this thorn is activated storage will be assigned, Conditional means that if this thorn is activated storage will be assigned for the duration of the run if some condition is met), or can be turned on for the duration of a schedule function.

Storage

NONE

Scheduled Functions

CCTK_INITIAL (conditional)

  sphericalharmonicdecomp_test

  test

CCTK_POSTSTEP (conditional)

  sphericalharmonicdecomp_dumpmetric

  extract and decompose spacetime metric