# Halo Finding and Analysis¶

In yt-3.x, halo finding and analysis are combined into a single framework called the HaloCatalog. This framework is substantially different from the halo analysis machinery available in yt-2.x and is entirely backward incompatible. For a direct translation of various halo analysis tasks using yt-2.x to yt-3.x, see Transitioning From yt-2 to yt-3.

## Halo Finding¶

If you already have a halo catalog, either produced by one of the methods below or in a format described in Halo Catalog Data, and want to perform further analysis, skip to Extra Halo Analysis.

Three halo finding methods exist within yt. These are:

Halo finding is performed through the creation of a HaloCatalog object. The dataset on which halo finding is to be performed should be loaded and given to the HaloCatalog along with the finder_method keyword to specify the method to be used.

import yt
from yt.analysis_modules.halo_analysis.api import HaloCatalog

hc = HaloCatalog(data_ds=data_ds, finder_method='hop')
hc.create()


The finder_method options should be given as “fof”, “hop”, or “rockstar”. Each of these methods has their own set of keyword arguments to control functionality. These can specified in the form of a dictinoary using the finder_kwargs keyword.

import yt
from yt.analysis_modules.halo_analysis.api import HaloCatalog

hc = HaloCatalog(data_ds=data_ds, finder_method='fof',
finder_kwargs={"ptype": "stars",
hc.create()


For a full list of keywords for each halo finder, see FOFHaloFinder, HOPHaloFinder, and RockstarHaloFinder.

### FOF¶

This is a basic friends-of-friends algorithm. See Efstathiou et al. (1985) for more details as well as FOFHaloFinder.

### HOP¶

The version of HOP used in yt is an upgraded version of the publicly available HOP code. Support for 64-bit floats and integers has been added, as well as parallel analysis through spatial decomposition. HOP builds groups in this fashion:

1. Estimates the local density at each particle using a smoothing kernel.
2. Builds chains of linked particles by ‘hopping’ from one particle to its densest neighbor. A particle which is its own densest neighbor is the end of the chain.
3. All chains that share the same densest particle are grouped together.
4. Groups are included, linked together, or discarded depending on the user-supplied over density threshold parameter. The default is 160.0.

See the HOP method paper for full details as well as HOPHaloFinder.

### Rockstar¶

Rockstar uses an adaptive hierarchical refinement of friends-of-friends groups in six phase-space dimensions and one time dimension, which allows for robust (grid-independent, shape-independent, and noise- resilient) tracking of substructure. The code is prepackaged with yt, but also separately available. The lead developer is Peter Behroozi, and the methods are described in Behroozi et al. 2011. In order to run the Rockstar halo finder in yt, make sure you’ve installed it so that it can integrate with yt.

At the moment, Rockstar does not support multiple particle masses, instead using a fixed particle mass. This will not affect most dark matter simulations, but does make it less useful for finding halos from the stellar mass. In simulations where the highest-resolution particles all have the same mass (ie: zoom-in grid based simulations), one can set up a particle filter to select the lowest mass particles and perform the halo finding only on those. See the this cookbook recipe for an example: Running Rockstar to Find Halos on Multi-Resolution-Particle Datasets.

To run the Rockstar Halo finding, you must launch python with MPI and parallelization enabled. While Rockstar itself does not require MPI to run, the MPI libraries allow yt to distribute particle information across multiple nodes.

Warning

At the moment, running Rockstar inside of yt on multiple compute nodes connected by an Infiniband network can be problematic. Therefore, for now we recommend forcing the use of the non-Infiniband network (e.g. Ethernet) using this flag: --mca btl ^openib. For example, here is how Rockstar might be called using 24 cores: mpirun -n 24 --mca btl ^openib python ./run_rockstar.py --parallel.

The script above configures the Halo finder, launches a server process which disseminates run information and coordinates writer-reader processes. Afterwards, it launches reader and writer tasks, filling the available MPI slots, which alternately read particle information and analyze for halo content.

The RockstarHaloFinder class has these options that can be supplied to the halo catalog through the finder_kwargs argument:

• dm_type, the index of the dark matter particle. Default is 1.
• outbase, This is where the out*list files that Rockstar makes should be placed. Default is ‘rockstar_halos’.
• num_readers, the number of reader tasks (which are idle most of the time.) Default is 1.
• num_writers, the number of writer tasks (which are fed particles and do most of the analysis). Default is MPI_TASKS-num_readers-1. If left undefined, the above options are automatically configured from the number of available MPI tasks.
• force_res, the resolution that Rockstar uses for various calculations and smoothing lengths. This is in units of Mpc/h. If no value is provided, this parameter is automatically set to the width of the smallest grid element in the simulation from the last data snapshot (i.e. the one where time has evolved the longest) in the time series: ds_last.index.get_smallest_dx() * ds_last['Mpch'].
• total_particles, if supplied, this is a pre-calculated total number of dark matter particles present in the simulation. For example, this is useful when analyzing a series of snapshots where the number of dark matter particles should not change and this will save some disk access time. If left unspecified, it will be calculated automatically. Default: None.
• dm_only, if set to True, it will be assumed that there are only dark matter particles present in the simulation. This option does not modify the halos found by Rockstar, however this option can save disk access time if there are no star particles (or other non-dark matter particles) in the simulation. Default: False.

Rockstar dumps halo information in a series of text (halo*list and out*list) and binary (halo*bin) files inside the outbase directory. We use the halo list classes to recover the information.

Inside the outbase directory there is a text file named datasets.txt that records the connection between ds names and the Rockstar file names.

#### Installing Rockstar¶

Because of changes in the Rockstar API over time, yt only currently works with a slightly older version of Rockstar. This version of Rockstar has been slightly patched and modified to run as a library inside of yt. By default it is not installed with yt, but installation is very easy. The All-in-One Installation Script used to install yt from source has a line: INST_ROCKSTAR=0 that must be changed to INST_ROCKSTAR=1. You can rerun this installer script over the top of an existing installation, and it will only install components missing from the existing installation. You can do this as follows. Put your freshly modified install_script in the parent directory of the yt installation directory (e.g. the parent of $YT_DEST, yt-x86_64, yt-i386, etc.), and rerun the installer: cd$YT_DEST
cd ..
vi install_script.sh  // or your favorite editor to change INST_ROCKSTAR=1
bash < install_script.sh


This will download Rockstar and install it as a library in yt.

## Extra Halo Analysis¶

As a reminder, all halo catalogs created by the methods outlined in Halo Finding as well as those in the formats discussed in Halo Catalog Data can be loaded in to yt as first-class datasets. Once a halo catalog has been created, further analysis can be performed by providing both the halo catalog and the original simulation dataset to the HaloCatalog.

halos_ds = yt.load('rockstar_halos/halos_0.0.bin')
hc = HaloCatalog(data_ds=data_ds, halos_ds=halos_ds)


A data object can also be supplied via the keyword data_source, associated with either dataset, to control the spatial region in which halo analysis will be performed.

The HaloCatalog allows the user to create a pipeline of analysis actions that will be performed on all halos in the existing catalog. The analysis can be performed in parallel with separate processors or groups of processors being allocated to perform the entire pipeline on individual halos. The pipeline is setup by adding actions to the HaloCatalog. Each action is represented by a callback function that will be run on each halo. There are four types of actions:

A list of all available filters, quantities, and callbacks can be found in Halo Analysis. All interaction with this analysis can be performed by importing from halo_analysis.

### Filters¶

A filter is a function that returns True or False. If the return value is True, any further queued analysis will proceed and the halo in question will be added to the final catalog. If the return value False, further analysis will not be performed and the halo will not be included in the final catalog.

An example of adding a filter:

hc.add_filter('quantity_value', 'particle_mass', '>', 1E13, 'Msun')


Currently quantity_value is the only available filter, but more can be added by the user by defining a function that accepts a halo object as the first argument and then adding it as an available filter. If you think that your filter may be of use to the general community, you can add it to yt/analysis_modules/halo_analysis/halo_filters.py and issue a pull request.

An example of defining your own filter:

def my_filter_function(halo):

# Define condition for filter
filter_value = True

# Return a boolean value
return filter_value

# ... Later on in your script


### Quantities¶

A quantity is a call back that returns a value or values. The return values are stored within the halo object in a dictionary called “quantities.” At the end of the analysis, all of these quantities will be written to disk as the final form of the generated halo catalog.

Quantities may be available in the initial fields found in the halo catalog, or calculated from a function after supplying a definition. An example definition of center of mass is shown below. Currently available quantities are center_of_mass and bulk_velocity. Their definitions are available in yt/analysis_modules/halo_analysis/halo_quantities.py. If you think that your quantity may be of use to the general community, add it to halo_quantities.py and issue a pull request. Default halo quantities are:

• particle_identifier – Halo ID (e.g. 0 to N)
• particle_mass – Mass of halo
• particle_position_x – Location of halo
• particle_position_y – Location of halo
• particle_position_z – Location of halo
• virial_radius – Virial radius of halo

An example of adding a quantity:

hc.add_quantity('center_of_mass')


An example of defining your own quantity:

def my_quantity_function(halo):
# Define quantity to return
quantity = 5

return quantity

# ... Later on in your script


This quantity will then be accessible for functions called later via the quantities dictionary that is associated with the halo object.

def my_new_function(halo):
print(halo.quantities["my_quantity"])

# ... Anywhere after "my_quantity" has been called


### Callbacks¶

A callback is actually the super class for quantities and filters and is a general purpose function that does something, anything, to a Halo object. This can include hanging new attributes off the Halo object, performing analysis and writing to disk, etc. A callback does not return anything.

An example of using a pre-defined callback where we create a sphere for each halo with a radius that is twice the saved radius.

hc.add_callback("sphere", factor=2.0)


Currently available callbacks are located in yt/analysis_modules/halo_analysis/halo_callbacks.py. New callbacks may be added by using the syntax shown below. If you think that your callback may be of use to the general community, add it to halo_callbacks.py and issue a pull request.

An example of defining your own callback:

def my_callback_function(halo):
# Perform some callback actions here
x = 2
halo.x_val = x

# Add the callback to the callback registry

# ...  Later on in your script


### Recipes¶

Recipes allow you to create analysis tasks that consist of a series of callbacks, quantities, and filters that are run in succession. An example of this is calculate_virial_quantities(), which calculates virial quantities by first creating a sphere container, performing 1D radial profiles, and then interpolating to get values at a specified threshold overdensity. All of these operations are separate callbacks, but the recipes allow you to add them to your analysis pipeline with one call. For example,

hc.add_recipe("calculate_virial_quantities", ["radius", "matter_mass"])


The available recipes are located in yt/analysis_modules/halo_analysis/halo_recipes.py. New recipes can be created in the following manner:

def my_recipe(halo_catalog, fields, weight_field=None):
# create a sphere
# make profiles
weight_field=weight_field)
# save the profile data

# add recipe to the registry of recipes

# ...  Later on in your script
weight_field="cell_mass")


Note, that unlike callback, filter, and quantity functions that take a Halo object as the first argument, recipe functions should take a HaloCatalog object as the first argument.

## Running the Pipeline¶

After all callbacks, quantities, and filters have been added, the analysis begins with a call to HaloCatalog.create.

hc.create()


The save_halos keyword determines whether the actual Halo objects are saved after analysis on them has completed or whether just the contents of their quantities dicts will be retained for creating the final catalog. The looping over halos uses a call to parallel_objects allowing the user to control how many processors work on each halo. The final catalog is written to disk in the output directory given when the HaloCatalog object was created.

All callbacks, quantities, and filters are stored in an actions list, meaning that they are executed in the same order in which they were added. This enables the use of simple, reusable, single action callbacks that depend on each other. This also prevents unnecessary computation by allowing the user to add filters at multiple stages to skip remaining analysis if it is not warranted.

A HaloCatalog saved to disk can be reloaded as a yt dataset with the standard call to yt.load. See HaloCatalog for a demonstration of loading and working only with the catalog. Any side data, such as profiles, can be reloaded with a load_profiles callback and a call to load().

hds = yt.load(path+"halo_catalogs/catalog_0046/catalog_0046.0.h5")
hc = HaloCatalog(halos_ds=hds,
output_dir="halo_catalogs/catalog_0046")