PlasmaPy v0.6.0 (2021-03-14)

The people who have contributed to the code for this release are:

• Anthony Vo

• Dhawal Modi *

• Dominik Stańczak

• Drozdov David *

• Erik Everson

• Kevin Montes *

• Nick Murphy

• Peter Heuer

• Ramiz Qudsi

• Tiger Du

An asterisk indicates that this release contains their first contribution to PlasmaPy.

Backwards Incompatible Changes

• The State namedtuple was changed to the plasmapy.particles.IonicFraction class. (Note: #1046 subsequently changed that to IonicLevel). (#796)

• Now, when the IonizationState class is provided with an ion, the ionic fraction for that ion is set to 100% for the corresponding element or isotope. (#796)

• AtomicError was renamed to ParticleError and MissingAtomicDataError was renamed to MissingParticleDataError. (#796)

• In plasmapy.particles, the IonizationStates class was renamed to IonizationStateCollection. Argument n of IonizationStates was changed to n0 in IonizationStateCollection. (#796)

• Moved and refactored error message formatting functionality from plasmapy.utils.error_messages to plasmapy.utils.code_repr. (#920)

• Renamed the available “methods” for computing the Coulomb logarithm in an attempt to make the names more explicit. This is implemented using the method keyword for functions Coulomb_logarithm and impact_parameter, and then propagated throughout the functionality in plasmapy.formulary.collisions. (#962)

• Added dependency pandas >= 1.0.0. Modified xarray dependency to be xarray >= 0.14.0. (#963)

• The AbstractGrid property grid is now dimensioned (has units) and cannot be accessed if all dimensions do not share the same units. (#981)

• Renamed attribute is_uniform_grid on AbstractGrid to is_uniform. (#981)

• Dropped Python 3.6 support. (#987)

• The __getitem__ method of AbstractGrid now returns a Quantity array instead of a reference to a xarray.DataArray. (#1027)

• Renamed IonicFraction to IonicLevel. This lays groundwork for future changes, where that class is going to become more than a fraction. (#1046)

Deprecations and Removals

• The particle attribute of Particle has been deprecated in favor of the new symbol attribute. The particle attribute now issues a FutureWarning to indicate that it will be removed in a future release. (#984)

Features

• Created the AbstractNormalizations class to serve as an abstract interface for future classes that represent normalizations. (#859)

• Create the analysis sub-package plasmapy.analysis.swept_langmuir for analysis code related to analyzing swept Langmuir traces. Subpackage is initiated with functionality for calculating the floating potential, find_floating_potential. (#889)

• Added a proton radiography diagnostic module containing a tool for generating synthetic proton radiographs from simulated or calculated fields using a particle tracking algorithm. (#895)

• Created new grid objects for representing plasma quantities as functions of space. (#909)

• Added functions in plasmapy.utils.code_repr to reproduce strings that represent a call to a method or attribute of an object. These functions are used, for example, in error messages. (#920)

• Added the function plasmapy.dispersion.two_fluid_dispersion.two_fluid_dispersion_solution to plasmapy.dispersion, which gives an analytical solution to the dispersion relation as derived by Bellan [2012]. (#932)

• Refactored out the plasmapy.simulation.particle_integrators.boris_push tracking integrator algorithm from plasmapy.simulation.particletracker.ParticleTracker. (#953)

• For plasmapy.plasma.grids functionality, added better support for recognizing and handling physical quantities (e.g., spatial position, magnetic field, etc.) added to a grid object. (#963)

• For plasmapy.plasma.grids functionality, improve interpolation performance on non-uniform grids. (#963)

• Added the diamagnetic_drift function to drifts. (#972)

• Added properties grid_resolution and quantities to AbstractGrid. (#981)

• Made several speed improvements to the functionality in grids, including the addition of keyword persistent to AbstractGrid (and child class) methods nearest_neighbor_interpolator and volume_averaged_interpolator. This keyword allows the interpolators to assume the last grid setup and contents if input arguments have not changed. (#981)

• Added methods on_grid and vector_intersects to AbstractGrid. (#981)

• The Particle class now contains an attribute named symbol that is intended to replace particle. The symbol attribute has been added as a property to AbstractParticle, CustomParticle, and DimensionlessParticle. (#984)

• Added new can_be_zero check parameter to CheckValues and its dependents ( check_values, ValidateQuantities, validate_quantities). (#999)

• Both plasmapy.particles.particle_class.CustomParticle and plasmapy.particles.particle_class.DimensionlessParticle now allow users to define a custom symbol via the symbol keyword argument, which can then be accessed by the symbol attribute in each of these classes. (#1015)

• The greater than (>) operator can now be used between Particle and/or ParticleList instances to get the nuclear reaction energy. (#1017)

• Created plasmapy.particles.particle_collections.ParticleList as a list-like collection for instances of plasmapy.particles.particle_class.Particle and plasmapy.particles.particle_class.CustomParticle. Adding Particle and/or CustomParticle instances will now create a ParticleList. (#1017)

• Added method require_quantities to AbstractGrid that verifies a list of quantities is present on the grid. Method is also incorporated into plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph. (#1027)

• Added the add_wire_mesh() method to plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph to allow the creation of synthetic proton radiographs that include a wire mesh reference grid. (#1049)

• Created a function, rot_a_to_b, that calculates the rotation matrix that will rotate one 3D vector onto another. (#1054)

• Made is_uniform a properly-documented public attribute of AbstractGrid. (#1072)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a minus sign bug in the Particle Tracker simulation that caused the E×B drift to go in the incorrect direction. (#953)

• Bugfix plasmapy.analysis.fit_functions.Linear.root_solve() to handle the case where the slope is zero and no finite roots exist. (#959)

• Fixed a bug that prevented nested iterations of a single IonizationState or IonizationStateCollection instance. (#1025)

• Fixed a bug in grids.py for non-uniform grids that arose when xarray upgraded to v0.17.0 (#1027)

• In plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph, adaptive dt now calculates the cyclotron period using the provided particle charge and mass (previously assumed protons). (#1035)

• In plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph, the adaptive timestep algorithm now works when particles are provided using plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph.load_particles. (#1035)

• In plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph, removed highly deflected particles so the call of plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph.max_deflection does not raise an exception. (#1035)

Improved Documentation

• Added narrative documentation on ionization state functionality. (#796)

• Added description to plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Hall_parameter signature and equation in docstrings. (#934)

• Updated documentation for the plasmapy.particles and plasmapy.utils subpackages. (#942)

• Improved documentation of plasmapy/formulary/quantum.py by cleaning up docstrings of contained functionality. (#951)

• Updated all docstrings associated with computing the Coulomb logarithm and the possible methods of calculation. (#962)

• Added two Jupyter notebooks for functionality contained in plasmapy.plasma.grids: grids_cartesian.ipynb and grids_nonuniform.ipynb. (#963)

• Added the ExB drift notebook, which demonstrates the analytical solution for the drift and the implementation of the corresponding formulary drift functions, force_drift and ExB_drift. (#971)

• Described what constitutes a valid representation of a particle in the docstring for the plasmapy.particles.particle_class.ParticleLike typing construct. (#985)

• Put the docstring for plasmapy.particles.particle_class.Particle.is_category into numpydoc format. (#1039)

• Added missing formulas to the docstrings of plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.quantum_theta and beta. (#1041)

• Added live rendering of changelog entries on documentation builds, based on sphinx-changelog. (#1052)

• Created an example notebook demonstrating how the plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph class can be used to generate synthetic proton radiographs with arbitrary source profiles. Add code documentation links to all proton radiograph notebooks. (#1054)

• Updated formatting and broken sphinx.ext.intersphinx links in plasmapy.formulary docstrings. (#1058)

• Made minor fixes in plasmapy.particles docstrings. (#1064)

• Organized the layout of the example Jupyter notebooks on the Read the Docs example page. (#1066)

• Fixed formatting and broken sphinx.ext.intersphinx links in docstrings in various places in the code base. Improved installation instructions in the docs; the subpackage stability matrix, and funding acknowledgments. (#1076)

Trivial/Internal Changes

• Removed colorama as a dependency. (#920)

• Moved remaining CI from CircleCI to GitHub Actions. (#996)

• Added notebook CI through nbqa. (#997)

• Removed lambda expressions from plasmapy.particles and plasmapy.utils. (#1013)

• Added unicode particle aliases for electrons ("β-", "β⁻"), muons ("μ-", "μ⁻"), anti-muons ("μ+", "μ⁺"), tau particles ("τ", "τ-", "τ⁻"), anti-tau particles ("τ+", "τ⁺") electron neutrinos ("ν_e"), muon neutrinos ("ν_μ"), tau neutrinos ("ν_τ"), and alpha particles ("α"). (#1036)

• A set containing all valid particle categories may now be accessed via plasmapy.particles.particle_class.Particle.is_category.valid_categories. (#1039)

• Properly handled warnings in test_proton_radiography.py (#1050)