PlasmaPy v2025.8.0 (2025-08-07)

New Features

• Enabled particle_input() to convert particle-list-like arguments passed to parameters decorated with ParticleListLike into ParticleList instances. (#2790)

• The new method plasmapy.plasma.grids.CartesianGrid.soften_edges applies an error function mask to the edges of all quantities on a grid. This is useful for any application where the grid must go to zero smoothly at the edges (e.g., for particle tracking with ParticleTracker). (#2911)

• Added the source_vdir keyword to the create_particles method of Tracker to explicitly define the orientation of the mean velocity of the source particles. (#2968)

• Added the detector_vdir keyword to Tracker to explicitly define the detector’s vertical surface vector. (#2968)

• Added a new module, plasmapy.formulary.laser, to make calculations related to laser pulses. Added the first function, electric_field_amplitude, which calculates the electric field strength from intensity. (#3021)

• Added plasmapy.formulary.laser.intensity to calculate intensity from the electric field amplitude for a laser. (#3032)

• Added helper function sort_sweep_arrays to plasmapy.analysis.swept_langmuir. (#3034)

• Added em_wavelength, em_angular_frequency, Gaussian_beam_waist_radius, Gaussian_spot_size_FWHM, Gaussian_power, Gaussian_Rayleigh_length, and normalized_vector_potential to plasmapy.formulary.laser. (#3036)

• Added helper function merge_voltage_clusters to plasmapy.analysis.swept_langmuir. (#3037)

Documentation Improvements

• Incorporated the plasmapy_theme via the plasmapy_sphinx.theme extension. (#1643)

• Removed docs/plasmapy_sphinx and put plasmapy_sphinx into its own repository at https://github.com/PlasmaPy/plasmapy_sphinx. (#1643)

• Added plasmapy_sphinx as a docs dependency. (#1643)

• Removed upper dependency limit on sphinx, and added lower limit of >=8.2.3. (#1643)

• Created a GitHub workflow (in weekly.yml and noxfile.py) to build documentation using the latest development version of plasmapy_sphinx on a weekly basis. (#1643)

• Incorporated sphinx extensions plasmapy_sphinx.ext.autodoc and plasmapy_sphinx.ext.directives. (#1643)

• Updated author metadata in CITATION.cff. (#2890)

• Removed duplicate section headers for example notebooks in the documentation for plasmapy.formulary. (#2892)

• Added acknowledgements to several organizations that have supported PlasmaPy or are aligned with its mission. (#2895)

• Fixed formatting problems and improved verb tense consistency in prior changelog entries. (#2901)

• Fixed references to the astropy.units.equivalencies module in the docs. Astropy now considers this file to be private API (which broke PlasmaPy’s intersphinx links), and recommends that its contents be imported through the astropy.units namespace. This pull request changes those links to a direct URL to Astropy Equivalencies. (#2915)

• Added a sentence to the documentation for plasmapy.dispersion to describe dispersion relations and their usefulness. (#2932)

• Updated the instructions for accessing test results and documentation previews in the Contributor Guide after recent changes to GitHub’s user interface. (#2935)

• Expanded the docstring of Hall_parameter. (#2938)

• Bumped the Python version for documentation builds from 3.12 to 3.13. (#2943)

• Updated the instructions on how to install PlasmaPy. (#2999)

• Put office hours on an indefinite hiatus. (#3013)

• Removed the sphinx-hoverxref Sphinx extension, since it has been deprecated in favor of the Read the Docs add-on for Link Previews. (#3024)

• Fixed broken hyperlinks and permanent redirects. (#3056)

• Summarized the dependency support policy from SPEC 0 at the end of the installation instructions. (#3059)

• Updated the Contributor Guide pages on the code contribution workflow and using pre-commit. (#3068)

• Upgraded PlasmaPy’s Code of Conduct to version 3.0 of the Contributor Covenant. (#3069)

• Updated the Feedback and Communication page. (#3070)

• Limited the allowed version of Sphinx to sphinx>=8.2.3,<8.3 because planned breaking changes to Sphinx are causing documentation build errors due to incompatibilities with some extensions. (#3073)

Backwards Incompatible Changes

• Variables in ParticleTracker and Tracker have been updated such that n* is now num_* (e.g., nparticles is now num_particles). Similarly, v_init is now v0 to be consistent with x0. (#2911)

• The method plasmapy.simulation.particle_tracker.particle_tracker.ParticleTracker.add_stopping requires that the argument I must now be a list of Quantity objects rather than a single Quantity array. This change is needed because None entries are now also accepted to that keyword as placeholders for grids on which stopping will not be applied. (#2911)

• ParticleTracker no longer accepts the parameter req_quantities, but instead automatically requires quantities required by the tracker for the given setup. Users wishing to require quantities may use the method require_quantities. (#2911)

• Removed the prototype plasma calculator from PlasmaPy so that it can be included in the plasmapy-calculator standalone package. (#3060)

Deprecations and Planned Removals

• Removed src/plasmapy/dispersion/dispersionfunction.py, which was deprecated in v2023.10.0. The functionality for the plasma dispersion function is in plasmapy.dispersion.dispersion_functions. (#2897)

Bug Fixes

• Enabled Particle to accept a numpy.integer object as the first argument to indicate the atomic number. (#3045)

• Fixed a possible bug when using plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.add_quantities alongside newer versions of xarray. (#3065)

Internal Changes and Refactorings

• Dropped support for Python 3.10 and bumped the minimum required versions of several dependencies following SPEC 0. (#2880)

• Updated the release checklist following the v2024.10.0 release. (#2886)

• Used typing.Self for type hint annotations for Particle and CustomParticle. (#2887)

• Modified tests for spectral_density to cover the case of multiple electron species. (#2906)

• The internal structure of ParticleTracker was optimized by caching some variables (e.g., tracked_particle_mask) which are then reset after every push cycle by a _reset_cache method. Instead of adding zero arrays for missing quantities, only quantities provided on the grid are interpolated, and other required quantities are filled in with an array of zeros automatically. Particle stopping can now be enabled on a subset of the provided grids. Adaptive time steps do not include magnetic field candidates if a magnetic field does not exist on the grid. The adaptive timestep is now set to that of the highest resolution grid for particles that are not currently on any grid. (#2911)

• Added User-Agent to the header of Downloader to resolve an issue with GitHub blocking API access. (#2915)

• Updated validators.py. (#2919)

• Began using uv.lock to pin the versions of dependencies used in tests and documentation builds. Previously, pinned requirements had been stored in requirements.txt style files in ci_requirements/ that were generated with uv pip compile for each operating system, Python version, and dependency set. Using uv.lock lets us store requirements information for different operating systems, Python versions, and dependency sets in a single file. (#2937)

• Switched from using actions/setup-python to astral-sh/setup-uv in GitHub workflows. (#2959)

• Enabled noxfile.py to be run as a script. The commands python noxfile.py -s 'tests-3.13(all)' and nox -s 'tests-3.13(all)' can now both be used to run all tests for Python 3.13. (#2961)

• Updated the requirements session for Nox so that the GitHub workflow now includes a table of the old and new versions of dependencies in the body of the pull request. (#2964)

• Enabled pyproject-fmt as an autoformatter and validate-pyproject as a validator for pyproject.toml via pre-commit. (#2974)

• Added a Nox session to perform security audits of GitHub workflows with zizmor in CI. (#2975)

• Enabled a pre-commit hook for mdformat to automatically format GitHub-flavored Markdown files. (#2981)

• Added a security policy at .github/SECURITY.md and enabled private security reporting through GitHub. (#2985)

• Reorganized .gitignore to put content that is custom or PlasmaPy-specific at the top of the file, followed by content adapted from .gitignore templates at the bottom. (#2997)

• Set uv as the sole backend to Nox, and changed the docs and tests dependency sets to include nox[uv] instead of nox. (#2998)

• Refactored tests for the charged_particle_radiography module to reduce test runtime. (#3039)

• Removed upper limits on the allowed versions of Astropy and xarray. (#3065)

• Parametrized tests within tests/utils/decorators.test_checks.py. (#3065)

• Updated tests/utils/decorators/test_checks.py for compatibility with updates to how astropy.units.Equivalency handles equality comparisons. (#3065)

Additional Changes

• The ax#, dx# and *_si properties of AbstractGrid are now cached properties for faster access, since these attributes do not change after the grid has been initialized. (#2911)

• Updated the configuration to automatically label pull requests on GitHub. (#2984)