PlasmaPy v2024.7.0 (2024-07-21)

New Features

• Implemented stopping_power to calculate stopping powers using the NIST’s ASTAR and PSTAR data. (#2555)

• Added ionization energy data from NIST to the Particle class. This can now be accessed using the ionization_energy attribute from the Particle class. (#2657)

• Renamed the binding_energy attribute of Particle to nuclear_binding_energy to avoid confusion with electron_binding_energy. (#2693)

• Added electron binding energy data, relying on ionization energy data from NIST, to the Particle class. This can now be accessed using the electron_binding_energy attribute from the Particle class. (#2693)

• Added a return_interpolator keyword to stopping_power to allow the user to specify the return of an interpolator function (CubicSpline under the hood). (#2712)

• Added the Bethe_stopping function to the collisions subpackage. (#2712)

• Added the ability to enable particle stopping in the ParticleTracker. (#2712)

Documentation Improvements

• Updated the Coding Guide 👾 with information on static type checking with mypy. (#2454)

• Updated the section in the Coding Guide 👾 about requirements and dependencies. (#2720)

• Updated docstrings in plasmapy.dispersion. (#2735)

• Updated docstrings in plasmapy.formulary.collisions. (#2736)

• Updated docstrings in plasmapy.formulary. (#2737)

• Updated docstrings for plasmapy.diagnostics and plasmapy.plasma.grids. (#2738)

• Added README.md files in the src/plasmapy, tests, docs, type_stubs, .github/content, .github/scripts, and .github/workflows directories. The contents of these files now appear as local documentation for each of these directories in PlasmaPy’s GitHub repository. (#2742)

• Automated creation of the index file for the release changelogs. The page for unreleased changes is included in the table of contents only if there are unreleased changes. (#2754)

• Re-wrote the “Test independence and parametrization” section of the Testing Guide to use extremely simple math. (#2763)

• Added functionality to generate a table of global substitutions in the Documentation Guide. (#2766)

• Renamed docs/_cff_to_rst.py to docs/_author_list_from_cff.py. (#2766)

• Based the version of PlasmaPy that gets included in development documentation builds on the current date and most recent git hash. (#2775)

• Merged the release guide into the Coding Guide 👾. (#2777)

• Added a new page to the Contributor Guide on Many Ways to Contribute to an open source project. (#2777)

• Updated the Coding Guide 👾, Testing Guide, and Documentation Guide within the Contributor Guide. (#2777)

• Moved the Contributor Guide section on example Jupyter notebooks from the Coding Guide 👾 to the Documentation Guide. (#2777)

• Added sphinxemoji as a Sphinx extension. (#2781)

Backwards Incompatible Changes

• Added a __str__ method to the CustomParticle class that returns the symbol of the particle if provided, and otherwise falls back to using __repr__. (#2702)

• Changed default keyword argument for the fraction_exited_threshold in Tracker and AllParticlesOffGridTerminationCondition to correspond with the fraction of particles that have entered and subsequently exited the grids. Previously this keyword was a misnomer, causing the simulation to instead terminate when the specified fraction of particles remaining on the grids was less than or equal to the provided fraction_exited_threshold. (#2712)

• Convert particle to a required argument of the load_particles method of ParticleTracker. (#2746)

Bug Fixes

• Enabled validate_quantities() to be compatible with postponed evaluation of annotations (see PEP 563). (#2479, #2506)

• Changed the charge number (\(Z\)) dependence of the ion contribution to the optical Thomson scattering spectral density function in spectral_density_lite from \(Z\) to \(z^2 / \bar{z}\) to match Eq. 5.1.2 and following equations in Sheffield et al. [2011]. The result is a small change in the ion acoustic wave spectrum for plasmas with multiple ion species. (#2699)

• Added axes removed by numpy.squeeze to arrays in mhd_waves_ (#2715)

Internal Changes and Refactorings

• Converted the tox environment for regenerating the requirements files used in continuous integration checks to Nox. (#2664)

• Created a parametrized Nox session to run tests. (#2681)

• Added Nox sessions to test importing PlasmaPy, validating CITATION.cff, and building a source distribution and wheel. (#2682)

• Switched the GitHub workflows for running tests from using tox environments to using Nox sessions. (#2685)

• Added pytest-filter-subpackage to the tests dependency set. This dependency enables us to run, for example, pytest -P particles to invoke tests for plasmapy.particles. (#2688)

• Added Nox sessions to run tests and build documentation against unreleased versions of major dependencies. (#2694)

• Deleted tox.ini, since all tox environments defined therein have been converted to Nox sessions. (#2694)

• Removed requirements.txt, along with the requirements files in ci_requirements/ that were used in tox environments that have since been replaced with Nox sessions. (#2694)

• Switched over weekly tests to use Nox sessions rather than tox environments. (#2694)

• Added the lint and manifest sessions for Nox to run pre-commit on all files and verify MANIFEST.in with check-manifest, respectively. (#2695)

• Added a Nox session that invokes autotyping to automatically add type hint annotations, using either the --safe or --aggressive options. (#2696)

• Added typos as a pre-commit hook to perform spellchecking. (#2700)

• Added a condition to check if the GitHub API can be reached to be used by the Downloader object. (#2710)

• Applied type hint annotations using autotyping, and made other updates to type hint annotations and docstrings. (#2728)

• Added type hint annotations to plasmapy.utils.roman. (#2733)

• Added type hint annotations to plasmapy.utils._units_helpers. (#2734)

• Added a Nox session for building the changelog. (#2744)

• Added an experimental Nox session for adding type hint annotations using MonkeyType. This session creates a database of variable types from running pytest, and then applies the observed types to a particular module. (#2747)

• Updated Nox sessions, including docstrings and troubleshooting messages. (#2750)

• Enabled tests to pass with numpy == 2.0.0. (#2772)

Additional Changes

• Refactored Tracker to use ParticleTracker. (#2704)

• Included src/plasmapy/_version.py in MANIFEST.in. This file is automatically generated using setuptools_scm, but is necessary for the version to be correct in the titles of pages in development documentation builds. (#2756)

• Updated the comment that gets posted to new pull requests via a GitHub workflow. (#2765)