List open source plasma physics packages

[StanczakDominik]

In the words of the wise @namurphy,

That reminds me... It would be great to have a page on our website that lists other open source packages in plasma physics. I would really like to emphasize the open source packages that exist already.

We should make sure that the packages have an Open Source Initiative approved license, or at the very least meet their definition of open source.

The primary tools for this one: listing known plasma open source packages here, and google. Once we have a bunch, we'll add them to the website.

I'll go through my stars on GitHub tomorrow and add a bunch of those.

[namurphy]

For reference:

• List of Open Source Initiative approved licenses
• Open Source Definition

[StanczakDominik]

I'll list relevant repositories I found for now:

• https://github.com/UCLA-Plasma-Simulation-Group/PIC-skeleton-codes no license
• https://github.com/fbpic/fbpic custom license
• https://github.com/openPMD
• https://github.com/SyntaxVoid/PyFusionGUI
• https://github.com/PPPLDeepLearning/plasma-python
• https://github.com/UCLA-Plasma-Simulation-Group/QuickPIC-OpenSource
• https://github.com/SmileiPIC/Smilei
• https://github.com/particleincell/Starfish-LE
• https://github.com/PyCOMPLETE/PyPIC
• https://github.com/PyCOMPLETE/PyHEADTAIL
• https://github.com/ALaDyn/piccante
• https://github.com/openpixi/openpixi
• https://github.com/htimko/ArcPIC
• https://github.com/ComputationalRadiationPhysics/picongpu

[namurphy]

• https://github.com/markchil/profiletools
• https://github.com/markchil/gptools

[namurphy]

Some more possibilities:

• https://github.com/boutproject/BOUT-dev
• https://github.com/gjwilkie/PlasmaTools
• https://github.com/jungerstein/plasmaPhyLib
• https://github.com/tulasinandan/TurbPlasma (no license)
• https://github.com/heliopython/heliopy
• https://github.com/timothyhollabaugh/PPPLCalibrationFramework (no license)

[namurphy]

Oh right...we should probably also link to more general Python packages (e.g., NumPy, SciPy, h5py, pytables, yt, pandas, xarray, numba, cython, SymPy, matplotlib) as well as related Python packages such as Astropy and SunPy, since all of these may be useful for plasma physicists.

[namurphy]

• Vlasiator (GPLv2)
• OpenMHD (GPLv3)