matplotlib - Typing Greek letters etc. in Python plots

Question

I need to type Greek letters and the Angstrom symbol in labels of axes in a plot. So for example

fig.gca().set_xlabel("$wavelength, (Angstrom)$")
fig.gca().set_ylabel("$lambda$")

except that I actually want "Angstrom" and "lambda" replaced by actual symbols. How should I do this? Thanks!

Answer 1

You need to make the strings raw and use latex:

fig.gca().set_ylabel(r'$lambda$')

As of matplotlib 2.0 the default font supports most western alphabets and can simple do

ax.set_xlabel('λ')

with unicode.