ARPES viewer

Version 1.3.0 (last modified 2 November 2026) -- what changed is in CHANGELOG.md. For non-commercial use only; see the terms of use.

A Python/PyQt5 program for ARPES data: browse the measurements of a beamtime, open them in their own windows, convert to momentum, cut, fit, process, compare with a band-structure calculation, and lay the results out as a publication figure.

What it does

• Reads SOLEIL ANTARES and CASSIOPEE (including whole folders and the spin end station), ALS MAESTRO, ALBA LOREA, Diamond I05 and I05-1, MAX IV Bloch, Elettra APE, BESSY One Cube / One Square, SOLARIS URANOS, ASTRID2 SGM4, and its own saved format (loading data).
• Shows cuts, Fermi-surface maps, photon-energy scans, spatially resolved scans and spin-resolved curves, each in its own window with linked cursors (the viewers).
• Converts maps and cuts to momentum, photon-energy scans to k_z, with the Brillouin zone drawn over them (§13, §14, §15).
• Analyses: Fermi-edge fits, Fermi-surface correction, MDC / EDC fits, ridge detection, curvature and second derivatives, dichroism, core levels, spin, de-gridding, detector corrections (§7–§24).
• Compares with theory: crystal structures, tight-binding fits, and calculated bands from Wien2k, VASP, Quantum ESPRESSO, Wannier90 and the FPLO + Wannier tools -- along a path, as constant-energy contours on any (hkl) plane, or as a 3-D Fermi surface (§25–§27).
• Makes figures: the figure composer, laid out like a manuscript page, exported as PNG, PDF or SVG, and saved with its data (§28–§30).
• Loses nothing: every derived dataset is autosaved, a crash is recovered from, and long steps show a progress bar (§31).

Installing and starting

Needs Python 3.9+. With pip, which installs PyQt5, pyqtgraph, numpy, h5py and scipy with it:

pip install arpes-viewer
arpes-viewer

(python -m arpes_viewer does the same; for the latest, unreleased version: pip install git+https://github.com/DingPei1995/ARPES-viewer.)

From a downloaded copy of this repository, with those packages installed:

python ARPES_viewer.py

• Windows: double-click ARPES viewer.pyw in this folder: no console window to close by mistake (the output goes to ~/.arpes_viewer/launcher.log).
• macOS: double-click ARPES viewer.app in this folder. It finds a Python that has the packages (conda included), remembers it, and says what to install if none has. The first time, if macOS calls it an app from an unidentified developer: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
• No beamtime at hand? python devtools/demo_data.py writes the synthetic demo data of the example figures below to demo_data/ (trying it with demo data).

From raw data to a publication figure

These are not real experimental data. Every panel above is made from the program's synthetic demo data (devtools/demo_data.py): an invented tight-binding toy model -- a triangular lattice, a = 3.3 Å, stacked with c = 6 Å, a few bands with orbital labels and a k_z dispersion -- turned into spectra with a Fermi-Dirac cut-off, the analyser resolution and Poisson counting noise, and written as beamline files. The "calculation" in panel (b) is the same toy Hamiltonian made deliberately 1/0.8 times wider and 50 meV higher, so that comparing it with the "measurement" has something to find. No published data or literature were used to generate them: the model and its parameters are invented, and names such as "Se-pxy" or "1T-TiSe₂-like" are labels for the toy, not a description of a real material. (The only tabulated values in the demo set are the X-ray line energies of its synthetic EDS spectrum, standard emission energies as listed in the X-ray Data Booklet; that spectrum is not part of this figure.)

_{Example figure 1 in the figure composer (top); the main panel and a Fermi-surface map in momentum, in its viewer (bottom) -- also on the synthetic demo data.}

Every step from the files to the finished figure is the program's own, and every step is plain Python that a script -- or an AI agent -- can run, without a screen:

devtools/figure_tests.py is exactly this script -- it writes the demo files, reads them back, and builds this figure (and its companion, example figure 2) in under a minute:

python devtools/figure_tests.py out_png/ out_afig/

In the step 3 fit it recovers what was built into the demo calculation (Z = 0.798 ± 0.001 and a shift of −49.8 ± 0.4 meV, against 0.8 and −50 meV).

An AI agent can drive it

The computations live in arpes_viewer/tools/, free of any user interface; the windows can run off-screen (QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen) and be driven call by call as a user drives them; each step is documented in the user guide and in the technical references beside the code; and a saved figure records the data and the original files behind every panel. So a coding agent given this repository and a folder of data can be asked in plain words -- "convert the Γ-plane map to momentum, compare it with the Wannier calculation in calc/, and make a figure like example figure 1, with constant-energy maps at E_F, −0.3, −0.6 and −0.9 eV" -- write and run the script, look at the PNG it made, and refine it, through to a figure ready for a manuscript. The user guide's worked example does the same by hand.

The MCP server. The program is also an MCP server, so an agent of any model (Claude, GPT, Gemini, a local model in an MCP-capable client) can call it: open and describe data files, read EDCs, MDCs and pictures out of them, fit the Fermi edge, convert to momentum, save -- and, with the program started as arpes-viewer --agent-bridge, drive the window on screen (run any tool, take screenshots). Add to the client's MCP configuration:

{"mcpServers": {"arpes-viewer": {"command": "arpes-viewer-mcp"}}}

(from a checkout: "command": "python", "args": ["-m", "arpes_viewer.agent"]). Data stay on the machine; see the user guide, §33. New to agents? The step-by-step guide is agentic/README.md.

As with any analysis, check what an agent produced before you publish it.

Bug reports

The program saves what went wrong by itself, in error_logs/errors_<date>_<time>.txt in its folder (in ~/.arpes_viewer/ when installed with pip), and keeps running. With a bug report on GitHub Issues, upload that file (drag it into the text box) or paste its text -- the main panel's foot has Copy the newest error log and Open the error logs -- and give the version number, shown in the main window's title bar.

Documentation

• User guide, with screenshots: English · 中文 · Français; as PDF: English · 中文 · Français.
• AI agents: start with the beginner's guide agentic/README.md -- connecting an agent step by step, runnable examples and requests to copy; then the MCP server (user guide §33) and the file-based agentic workflow.
• What changed, and why: CHANGELOG.md.
• Technical references, beside the code they describe -- the formulas, the file layouts, the assumptions and the tests behind each step:
  • Reading data -- every facility's files, the data kinds, adding a beamline, the assumptions the formats force;
  • The windows -- the main panel, the viewers, autosave and recovery, long operations;
  • Analysis -- what each tool does and what it assumes;
  • Momentum conversion -- k conversion, k_z maps;
  • Spectra -- core levels, curves, curve fits, spin;
  • Processing -- de-gridding, cut arithmetic;
  • Figures, export and the experiment log;
  • For developers -- the layout of the code, and the tests (python -m pytest).

Terms of use, citation and licence

Terms of use. This program is for non-commercial use only (academic research and teaching); any commercial use is not permitted. New and updated loaders cover data from public large-scale facilities (synchrotrons and similar user facilities), formats of individual laboratories' own set-ups can be added by the user him/herself. If you use this program for a paper on ARPES experiments, please cite it in its references: Ding Pei, ARPES viewer, Zenodo, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23771647 (GitHub's Cite this repository gives the reference in other formats). If you write a paper related to AI that uses this program or its code, please discuss it with the author by e-mail first. For collaborations, or questions about the details, contact ding.pei@synchrotron-soleil.fr.

Licence and authorship. Copyright (c) 2026 Ding Pei. Licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0; see also NOTICE. This is the author's personal work, developed from the author's own earlier code; no institution funded it. Some of its ideas were inspired by the ARPES data-processing programs of the author's former group, the Chen Group at the University of Oxford. The requirements, design decisions, trade-offs, physics, the testing on real experimental data and the feedback from it (drawing on Phys. Rev. B 103, 245121 (2021) and Phys. Rev. B 95, 125126 (2017)), and the review and acceptance of every change are Ding Pei's; the implementation was assisted by Claude (Anthropic), credited as co-author in the commits.