Arrows as subscripts

Question

consider the following document:

\documentclass{minimal}

\begin{document}

  Hello world

  \begin{equation}
    x_{1} x_{\uparrow} \uparrow
  \end{equation}

\end{document}

The problem is that using arrows as subscripts looks kind of out of place compared to normal subscripts. Maybe the problem is that the arrows are just too large in general. Any ideas on how to achieve a more aesthetically pleasing result?

Answer 1

You can get a smaller size uparrow using \scriptscriptstyle

$x_{1} 1 \uparrow x_{\scriptscriptstyle\uparrow}$

I can't judge if this is a more aesthetically pleasing result, though.

Answer 2

You can try writing the arrow in a resize box

$x_{\uparrow}$
$x_{\resizebox{0.1cm}{0.1cm}{{$\uparrow$}}}$

Answer 3

The scalerel package allows you to scale one object to the same vertical extent as another. Furthermore, it obeys changing math sizes. So here, I define \onearrow as an arrow scaled to the local height of a "1". It works automatically in all math sizes.

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{scalerel}
\def\onearrow{{\scalerel*{\uparrow}{1}}}
\begin{document}
  \begin{equation}
    x_{1} x_\onearrow \onearrow = 1_{\onearrow_\onearrow}
  \end{equation}

\end{document}