PAN Blend xas packages

Larch is an open-source library and analysis toolkit for processing scientific data. Initially designed for x-ray spectroscopic and scattering data collected at modern synchrotrons and x-ray sources, Larch also provides many general-purpose processing and analysis tools for dealing with arrays of scientific data and organize complex data sets.

Larch is written in Python, making heavy use of the wonderful numpy, scipy, h5py, and matplotlib libraries, and can be used directly as a Python library or extended using Python. In addition, Larch provides a Python-like language (a macro language, or domain specific language) that is intended to be very easy to use for novices while also being complete enough for advanced data processing and analysis.

Larch has several related target application areas, including:

• XAFS analysis, becoming version 2 of the Ifeffit Package.
• Visualizing and analyzing micro-X-ray fluorescence maps.
• Quantitative X-ray fluorescence analysis.
• X-ray standing waves and surface scattering analysis.
• Data collection software for synchrotron data.

The essential idea is that having these different areas connected by a common macro language will strengthen the analysis tools available for all of them, and provide a very shallow barrier for those interested in scripting the manipulation and analysis of their data.

Currently, Larch provides a complete set of XAFS Analysis tools (replacing all of the Ifeffit package), has some support for visualizing and analyzing XRF maps and spectra, and has many extra tools for X-ray spectral analysis, data handling, and general-purpose data modeling.