PyFstat

This is a python package containing basic wrappers of the lalpulsar module with capabilities to perform a variety of searches, primarily focusing on semi-coherent glitch searches.

Examples

We include a variety of example search scripts here, for each example there is also a more descriptive write-up containing examples of the output which we list below. Before running any of the search examples, be sure to have run the script to generate fake data.

• Making fake data with and without glitches
• Fully-coherent MCMC search
• Fully-coherent MCMC search on data containing a single glitch
• Semi-coherent MCMC glitch-search on data containing a single glitch
• Semi-coherent MCMC glitch-search on data containing two glitches

Installation

The script can be installed system wide via

$ python setup.py install

or simply add this directory to your python path. To check that the installation was successful, run

$ python -c 'import pyfstat'

if no error message is output, then you have installed pyfstat.

Ephemeris installation

The scripts require a path to ephemeris files in order to use the lalpulsar.ComputeFstat module. This can either be specified when initialising each search, or more simply by placing a file ~/pyfstat.conf into your home directory which looks like

earth_ephem = '/home/<USER>/lalsuite-install/share/lalpulsar/earth00-19-DE421.dat.gz'
sun_ephem = '/home/<USER>/lalsuite-install/share/lalpulsar/sun00-19-DE421.dat.gz'

here, we use the default ephemeris files provided with lalsuite.

Dependencies

• swig-enabled lalpulsar, a minimal configuration is given by

$ ./configure --prefix=${HOME}/lalsuite-install --disable-all-lal --enable-lalpulsar --enable-lalapps --enable-swig

• emcee¹
• corner¹
• dill¹
• tqdm¹ (optional), if installed, this provides a useful progress bar and estimate of the remaining run-time.