LevelScheme

Publication-quality scientific figures with Mathematica

Mark Caprio, University of Notre Dame
Comput. Phys. Commun. 171, 107 (2005)

Jul/Aug/Sep 2005 quarterly listing (#2 most downloaded article in Comput. Phys. Commun.)
Oct/Nov/Dec 2005 quarterly listing (#7 most downloaded article in Comput. Phys. Commun.)

LevelScheme is a system for preparing publication-quality scientific figures with Mathematica. LevelScheme features

multi-panel and inset figures,
convenient tools for labeling and annotating figures, and
customizable tick marks,

as well as a variety of drawing elements (lines, arrows, boxes, circles, etc.) you may use to create diagrams. The figures you create can incorporate any kind of plot or graphics produced by Mathematica. You can therefore easily combine

mathematical plots,
data plots, and
technical drawings or diagrams

in the same figure. For instance, the LevelScheme logo shown above was drawn within Mathematica as a single LevelScheme figure.

LevelScheme was originally designed to allow the easy and efficient preparation of high-quality level schemes, or level energy diagrams, as used in nuclear, atomic, molecular, and hadronic physics. LevelScheme automates many of the tedious aspects of preparing a level scheme, such as positioning transition arrows between levels or placing text labels alongside the objects they label. The package allows extensive manual fine tuning of the drawing appearance, text formatting, and object positioning. It also includes specialized features for creating several common types of level schemes encountered in nuclear physics. The full power of Mathematica's programming language may be used in constructing the figure contents. For instance, level energies and transition properties for the diagram can be input from data files, or even directly computed within Mathematica.

LevelScheme has been replaced by its successor package SciDraw.

However, you can still download the final release of LevelScheme, Version 3.53 (January 2013) for Mathematica 6 and higher:

DOWNLOAD (ZIP file)

OTHER INFORMATION

User guides (also included in the full download above): LevelSchemeGuide.pdf and CustomTicksGuide.pdf

The Computer Physics Communications article Comput. Phys. Commun. 171, 107 (2005) (subscription required) or physics/0505065 (freely available) provides an overview of the LevelScheme figure preparation system's motivation and implementation.

Further technical documentation for several of the subpackages is available through the Mathematica Information Center's MathSource code library: see LevelScheme at MathSource

If you are still using Mathematica 5 or below, you can download an older version of LevelScheme meant for these versions of Mathematica.

Last modified: September 26, 2015
Mark Caprio, University of Notre Dame