Markdown Files

Whether you write your book’s content in Jupyter Notebooks (.ipynb) or in regular markdown files (.md), you’ll write in the same flavor of markdown called MyST Markdown. This is a simple file to help you get started and show off some syntax.

What is MyST?

MyST stands for “Markedly Structured Text”. It is a slight variation on a flavor of markdown called “CommonMark” markdown, with small syntax extensions to allow you to write roles and directives in the Sphinx ecosystem.

For more about MyST, see the MyST Markdown Overview.

Sample Roles and Directives

Roles and directives are two of the most powerful tools in Jupyter Book. They are kind of like functions, but written in a markup language. They both serve a similar purpose, but roles are written in one line, whereas directives span many lines. They both accept different kinds of inputs, and what they do with those inputs depends on the specific role or directive that is being called.

Here is a “note” directive:

Note

Here is a note

It will be rendered in a special box when you build your book.

Here is an inline directive to refer to a document: Notebooks with MyST Markdown.

Citations

You can also cite references that are stored in a bibtex file. For example, the following syntax: {cite}`holdgraf_evidence_2014` will render like this: [].

Moreover, you can insert a bibliography into your page with this syntax: The {bibliography} directive must be used for all the {cite} roles to render properly. For example, if the references for your book are stored in references.bib, then the bibliography is inserted with:

BO99

Carl M Bender and Steven A Orszag. Advanced mathematical methods for scientists and engineers I: Asymptotic methods and perturbation theory. Volume 1. Springer Science & Business Media, 1999.

BeuinusovichL18

Migdal, Arkadiĭ Beĭnusovich and Anthony J Leggett. Qualitative methods in quantum theory. CRC Press, 2018.

Cal98

Herbert B Callen. Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics. American Association of Physics Teachers, 1998.

CL00

Paul M Chaikin and Tom C Lubensky. Principles of condensed matter physics. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Ein07

Albert Einstein. Die plancksche theorie der strahlung und die theorie der spezifischen wärme. Annalen der Physik, 327(1):180–190, 1907.

Fer12

Enrico Fermi. Thermodynamics. Courier Corporation, 2012.

FW12

Alexander L Fetter and John Dirk Walecka. Quantum theory of many-particle systems. Courier Corporation, 2012.

Fey18

Richard P Feynman. Statistical mechanics: a set of lectures. CRC press, 2018.

Gol18

Nigel Goldenfeld. Lectures on phase transitions and the renormalization group. CRC Press, 2018.

Ma85

Shang-Keng Ma. Statistical mechanics. World Scientific Publishing Company, 1985.

NH14

Rahul Nandkishore and David A Huse. Many body localization and thermalization in quantum statistical mechanics. arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.0686, 2014.

Oon17

Yoshitsugu Oono. Perspectives on Statistical Thermodynamics. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Pel11

Luca Peliti. Statistical mechanics in a nutshell. Princeton University Press, 2011.

SLS+21

KJ Satzinger, Y-J Liu, A Smith, C Knapp, M Newman, C Jones, Z Chen, C Quintana, X Mi, A Dunsworth, and others. Realizing topologically ordered states on a quantum processor. Science, 374(6572):1237–1241, 2021.

SLK+21

Giulia Semeghini, Harry Levine, Alexander Keesling, Sepehr Ebadi, Tout T Wang, Dolev Bluvstein, Ruben Verresen, Hannes Pichler, Marcin Kalinowski, Rhine Samajdar, and others. Probing topological spin liquids on a programmable quantum simulator. Science, 374(6572):1242–1247, 2021.

Set21

James Sethna. Statistical mechanics: entropy, order parameters, and complexity. Volume 14. Oxford University Press, USA, 2021.

Sha12

Ramamurti Shankar. Principles of quantum mechanics. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.

Sha94

Rev Shankar. Renormalization-group approach to interacting fermions. Reviews of Modern Physics, 66(1):129, 1994.

Sim13

Steven H Simon. The Oxford solid state basics. OUP Oxford, 2013.

Sre94

Mark Srednicki. Chaos and quantum thermalization. arXiv preprint cond-mat/9403051, 1994.

Tin03

Michael Tinkham. Group theory and quantum mechanics. Courier Corporation, 2003.

Wol23

Stephen Wolfram. Second law of Thermodynamics(https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/computational-foundations-for-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/). Stephen Wolfram Writings, 2023.

Learn more

This is just a simple starter to get you started. You can learn a lot more at jupyterbook.org.