transient-gw-data.txt

.. _transient_gw_data:

=====================================
Transient gravitational wave data I/O
=====================================

This document describes how :code:`bilby` handles interferometer data and how
you can load data.

What is used by the likelihood?
-------------------------------

First up, the :ref:`likelihood` used for transient gravitational wave searches
is either :code:`bilby.gw.likelihood.GravitationalWaveTransient` or
:code:`bilby.gw.likelihood.BasicGravitationalWaveTransient`. Both of these take
an argument `interferometers` which is a list of
`bilby.gw.detector.Interferometer` objects. These objects know about the
geometry of the detector, the noise properties of the detector, and the
segment of data which is to be analysed. In the following, we'll describe
difference ways to set this data.

Making an Interferometer
------------------------

First up, you can easily get one of the known interferometers using this command::

   >>> H1 = bilby.gw.detector.get_empty_interferometer('H1')

By default, these will have power spectral densities based on typical behaviour
of the detector. The strain data (i.e. the data about the segment of interferomer
data which we want to analyse) is in an attribute :code:`H1.strain_data`. The
following is a list of ways to set this strain data.

Setting the strain data
-----------------------

Setting the strain data directly
================================

If you have an array of the frequency-domain strain data, you can set it
directly like this::

   >>> H1.set_strain_data_from_frequency_domain_strain(frequency_domain_strain,
                                                       sampling_frequency=sampling_frequency,
                                                       duration=duration,
                                                       start_time=start_time)

Where the given arguments are things you have already defined in your python
script. If you'd prefer to give the :code:`frequency_array` to which the
data corresponds instead of the :code:`sampling_frequency` and :code:`duration`
this can also be done::

   >>> H1.set_strain_data_from_frequency_domain_strain(frequency_domain_strain,
                                                       sampling_frequency=sampling_frequency,
                                                       duration=duration,
                                                       start_time=start_time)

Here is the full API:

.. automethod:: bilby.gw.detector.Interferometer.set_strain_data_from_frequency_domain_strain


Setting the strain data from a frame file
=========================================

To set the data from a frame file, use this method

.. automethod:: bilby.gw.detector.Interferometer.set_strain_data_from_frame_file

Setting the strain data from a channel name
===========================================

To set the data by specifying the channel name, use this method. It calls 
:code:`gwpy.TimeSeries.get`, which dynamically accesses either frames on disk, 
or a remote NDS2 server to find and return data.

.. automethod:: bilby.gw.detector.Interferometer.set_strain_data_from_channel_name

Setting the strain data to be Gaussian noise
============================================

Often, for testing, you may want to just generate a realization of coloured
Gaussian noise from the power spectral density. This can be done using this
method:

.. automethod:: bilby.gw.detector.Interferometer.set_strain_data_from_power_spectral_density

Setting the strain data to be zero noise
========================================

.. automethod:: bilby.gw.detector.Interferometer.set_strain_data_from_zero_noise

Injecting a signal
------------------

If you wish to inject a signal into the data, you can use this function

.. automethod:: bilby.gw.detector.Interferometer.inject_signal

Helper functions
----------------

To help setting things up, we provide a few convienience functions for typical
operations:

.. autofunction:: bilby.gw.detector.get_interferometer_with_fake_noise_and_injection

.. autofunction:: bilby.gw.detector.get_interferometer_with_open_data

.. autofunction:: bilby.gw.detector.get_event_data