.. _sphx_glr_auto_examples_c_fields:

:orphan:

Core Modules: Fields
====================

This gallery showcases examples based on the :mod:`fields` module, PyMetric's core abstraction
for physical quantities defined over space—scalars, vectors, tensors, and more.

The :mod:`fields` module provides a unified interface for working with field components, units,
buffers, and coordinate-aware differential operations. These examples walk through how to:

- Construct scalar, vector, and tensor fields over structured grids,
- Manage physical units and buffer types (e.g., NumPy, unyt, HDF5),
- Broadcast, expand, reduce, and reshape field components,
- Apply differential geometry operations like gradients, divergence, and Laplacians,
- Combine symbolic metadata with numerical buffers for hybrid workflows.

From initializing a field from an analytic expression to computing its divergence in curved space,
these examples demonstrate the expressive and extensible field API at the heart of PyMetric.

.. hint::

    For complete documentation, see :ref:`fields`.



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    <div class="sphx-glr-thumbnails">

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    <div class="sphx-glr-thumbcontainer" tooltip="Compute the NFW density from a potential profile.">

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  .. image:: /auto_examples/c_fields/images/thumb/sphx_glr_plot_elem_lap_nfw_thumb.png
    :alt:

  :ref:`sphx_glr_auto_examples_c_fields_plot_elem_lap_nfw.py`

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      <div class="sphx-glr-thumbnail-title">NFW Density from Potential</div>
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    <div class="sphx-glr-thumbcontainer" tooltip="This example demonstrates how to compute the elementwise partial derivatives of a scalar field in a Cartesian coordinate system using PyMetric’s high-level DenseField interface.">

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  .. image:: /auto_examples/c_fields/images/thumb/sphx_glr_plot_elem_wise_diff_thumb.png
    :alt:

  :ref:`sphx_glr_auto_examples_c_fields_plot_elem_wise_diff.py`

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      <div class="sphx-glr-thumbnail-title">Elementwise Partial Derivative (2D Cosine)</div>
    </div>


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    <div class="sphx-glr-thumbcontainer" tooltip="Compute an NFW density in Oblate Coordinates.">

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  .. image:: /auto_examples/c_fields/images/thumb/sphx_glr_plot_nfw_symmetry_break_thumb.png
    :alt:

  :ref:`sphx_glr_auto_examples_c_fields_plot_nfw_symmetry_break.py`

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      <div class="sphx-glr-thumbnail-title">NFW Density in Oblate Coordinates</div>
    </div>


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    </div>


.. toctree::
   :hidden:

   /auto_examples/c_fields/plot_elem_lap_nfw
   /auto_examples/c_fields/plot_elem_wise_diff
   /auto_examples/c_fields/plot_nfw_symmetry_break