Technical Requirements

To participate fully in the workshop, participants should have a basic knowledge of scientific Python and bring with them a reasonably modern laptop with Python 3.x and Matplotlib installed (4GB of ram preferred).

Rayleigh is written primarily in Fortran and, optionally, employs simple C++ libraries for directory creation at runtime. In addition, Rayleigh depends on several commonly used external libraries. If you wish to install and run Rayleigh locally, you will need to install the following on your system prior to the workshop.

• Fortran compiler (tested GNU, Intel, and IBM)
• C++ compiler (Optional; tested GNU and Intel)
• BLAS
• LAPack
• FFTW (version 3.x or higher)
• MPI (for Fortran)
• Optional: Intel's MKL library provides interfaces to LAPack, BLAS, and FFTW3. A single MKL installation may be used in place of those three, separately installed libraries.

Unless you already have these packages installed, it's probably most efficient to install them using a Conda environment as described here: https://rayleigh-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/doc/source/User_Guide/devel_environment.html

Instructions are provided for both Mac and Linux operating systems.  For those users who experience trouble in following this process, please post to the Rayleigh forum.