Wick contractions appear in quantum field theory calculations where they connect field operators in time-ordered products to recover propagators. Writing them in LaTeX is tedious with the standard simplewick package, which requires manual bracket matching and is sensitive to spacing.
simpler-wick provides a cleaner syntax: contractions are specified by pairing labels, and the package handles the bracket drawing automatically.
Usage
\usepackage{simpler-wick}
% Contract fields 1–4 and 2–3:
\(
\wick{
\c1\psi \c2\bar\psi \c2\phi \c1\bar\phi
}
\)Each contraction appears as a bracket above the expression. The bracket’s height grows with the number after \c, so overlapping contractions sit at different levels.
Available on CTAN.