Using Axodraw

The file axodraw.sty is a style file for L^ATEX. It should be included in the documentstyle statement at the beginning of the document. An example would be:

    \documentstyle[a4,11pt,axodraw]{article}

Because axodraw.sty reads also the epsf.sty file that comes with many implementations of TEX and in particular those that rely on the dvips program by Radical Eye Software for the printing, this file should be present in the system. If this file is not available one should obtain it from another system. The author feels in no way responsible for the problems that may occur when a different dvi-to-postscript program is used.

The drawing is actually done in postscript. Because the above mentioned dvi-to-postscript converter allows the inclusion of postscript code the graphics primitives have been included in the file axodraw.sty in terms of postscript. If another postscript converter is used, one may have to adapt the syntax of the inclusion of this code to the local system.

The commands of Axodraw should be executed inside either the picture or the figure environment. Inside this environment it is possible to place objects at arbitrary positions and put text between them. In principle one could try to draw objects with the facilities of L^ATEX itself, but it turns out that the commands in the picture environment are not very powerful. Axodraw gives good extensions of them. An example would be

    \begin{center} \begin{picture}(300,100)(0,0)
    \GlueArc(150,50)(40,0,180){5}{8}
    \GlueArc(150,50)(40,180,360){5}{8}
    \Gluon(50,50)(110,50){5}{4}  \Vertex(110,50){2} 
    \Gluon(190,50)(250,50){5}{4} \Vertex(190,50){2}
    \end{picture}  \\ {\sl A gluon loop diagram} \end{center}

This code would result in:

$\begin{picture}(300,100)(0,0) \GlueArc(150,50)(40,0,180){5}{8} \GlueArc(150,50)(... ...Vertex(110,50){2} \Gluon(190,50)(250,50){5}{4} \Vertex(190,50){2} \end{picture}$

A gluon loop diagram

The syntax and the meaning of these command are explained in the next section. One should note that all coordinates are presented in units of 1 point. There are 72 points in an inch. It is possible to use scale transformations if these units are not convenient.

Currently the primitives are mainly useful for the drawing of Feynman diagrams and the drawing of flowcharts. This means that the commands were designed to draw a number of these graphs. Of course many more things can be drawn with them, like scatter plots, histograms etc. With such use it may be though that the user will miss some primitives that would come in handy. Of course in future versions there will be more primitives, especially when users suggest some really good ones.