LASY: LAser manipulations made eaSY

Abstract: Using realistic laser profiles for simulations of laser-plasma interaction is critical to reproduce experimental measurements, but the interface between experiments and simulations can be challenging. Similarly, start-to-end simulations with different codes may require error-prone manipulations to convert between different representations of a laser pulse. In this work, we propose LASY, an open-source Python library to simplify these workflows. Developed through an international collaboration between experimental, theoretical and computational physicists, LASY can be used to initialize a laser profile from an experimental measurement, from a simulation, or from analytics, manipulate it, and write it into a file in compliance with the openPMD standard. This profile can then be used as an input of a simulation code.