This project implements an algorithm for numerically finding MOTSs that are not star-shaped. The current implementation is limited to the axisymmetric case but the ideas it is based on easily generalize to the fully non-symmetrical case.

Anyone is free and welcome to use the code provided in this project (see the LICENSE.txt). For any publications produced using this code, please cite:

D. Pook-Kolb, O. Birnholtz, B. Krishnan and E. Schnetter "Existence and stability of marginally trapped surfaces in black-hole spacetimes." Physical Review D 99.6 (2019): 064005.

For any questions/comments/ideas, feel free to contact daniel.pook.kolb at aei.mpg.de.

HTML documentation (including this readme) is available in:

./docs/html/index.html

IMPORTANT

If a class method is not documented, check if the parent class one is instead.

• Brill-Lindquist initial data
• Using the finder with a numerical metric

The prerequisites to running the MOTS Finder are as follows:

• Python 3.6.6
• SciPy 1.1.0
• NumPy 1.14.3
• SymPy 1.1.1
• mpmath 1.0.0
• matplotlib
• Jupyter
• For reading simulation data: SimulationIO with its prerequisites and Python 3 bindings

The simplest way to set up the environment on a Linux-based machine is as follows. Here, we use apt (e.g. in Ubuntu), please translate to your preferred package management method.

$ sudo apt install virtualenv
$ cd ~
$ virtualenv --always-copy --python=python3 py3env
$ source ~/py3env/bin/activate
$ pip install numpy scipy sympy mpmath matplotlib jupyter
$ mkdir -p ~/src
$ cd ~/src
$ git clone https://github.com/daniel-dpk/distorted-motsfinder-public.git

Then, to start a notebook server in a dedicated folder:

$ source ~/py3env/bin/activate
$ mkdir -p ~/src/motsfinder-local-notebooks
$ cd ~/src/motsfinder-local-notebooks
$ jupyter notebook

If you need to read simulation data and would like to use SimulationIO for this purpose, please see its instructions for building and installation.

Maintainer: Daniel Pook-Kolb

Further authors and contributors:

• Ofek Birnholtz
• Badri Krishnan
• Erik Schnetter
• Victor Zhang

An overview of how the project source is organized and documented is available in README_SRC.md.