Time cropping feature idea for the .plot_fluctuations() function

Just wanted to propose a small feature for your consideration!

Once the Instrument object has been initialized, the .plot_fluctuations() function is helpful for seeing some general diagnostic plots of the instrument's behavior. A feature that might be nice is the ability to specify the time range over which you want the plot to be generated. Currently, one can only specify how many initial timing data points they want to 'skip,' but not how many data points to remove from the end.

This would also make the Instrument code more uniform in practice to what GWResponse allows. In that code, once the GW object has been initialized, the .plot() function has the same general purpose. In .plot(), however, you must provide the time array explicitly, which makes it easy for the user to cut a specific time slice out that they want to visualize. E.g. .plot(times) for the full array, or .plot(times[100:-200]) for a temporally cropped version.

added feature label

One additional note: similar to GWResponse, LISA Glitch's .plot() function allows time cropping by letting the user pass tmin and tmax arguments. Perhaps all three codes could be slightly modified in this feature proposal so that they use the same convention?

assigned to @j2b.bayle

Hi @caseymcgrath!

Thanks for the suggestion! The big difference is that an instance of Instrument is currently deeply linked with a time grid (passed with size, dt, and t0 at creation), contrary to a GWResponse object (we do pass the same arguments, but they are not really used -- what matters is the time array we pass to compute_gw_respons()). Indeed, inside Instrument.__init__, we perform some computations that depends on this time array. That's why Instrument.simulate does not accept a time argument.

How would you write Instrument.plot_fluctuations with a time array?