RFC: Expanding HEP capabilities in SymPy

[Stelios Spyrounakos]

Hello SymPy community,

I’m a physicist with a Master's in particle physics and I'm interested in expanding the capabilities of the HEP (high-energy physics) module. 

Currently, as far as I can tell, the field is dominated by Mathematica (in combination with the FeynCalc package), a proprietary (and expensive) tool, when it comes to symbolic manipulation. While FORM (written mainly in C) is the academic standard when it comes to the heavy lifting, it isn't always the most appropriate, or easiest, tool (for example, it cannot be used interactively and takes a file as input). I believe that open source tools are better for research, and I would like to see SymPy become a viable alternative for HEP research work.

Of course, competing with the established "standard" would not be easy, nor quick. Before I started any work, I wanted to write this message to find out the opinion of the community and see if there is any interest in that direction. I also wanted to learn if there are any existing plans for the HEP module. I am very open to ideas, help, and collaboration, especially if anyone more familiar with the tensor and hep codebase is interested.

I am not sure how much time I will have available in the future, as I will move forward with a PhD, but I would like to contribute to this project when possible. 

Best regards,

Stelios Spyrounakos