NHSE Software Catalog

PIPES - diffraction modeling software

contact

gleb@duteisp.et.tudelft.nl

description

http://guernsey.et.tudelft.nl/pipes/pipes.html
Pipes is a small package which can help you to build models of optical devices
in the frame of scalar diffraction theory.

Package consists of expandable set of filters, the filters can be connected
through system pipelines in any order within the shell environment to form the
model of optical system. In some respect it can be considered as ``scalar
diffraction'' extension of standard set of UNIX tools such as ``grep'' or
``sort''.

The program operates on one large structure which contains a square
two-dimensional array of complex amplitudes of electromagnetic field in a
propagating light beam. You can filter the field through normal and Gaussian
apertures, lenses, you can propagate it. you can split your beams and you can
mix them again. You can write to a file the intensity and phase distributions
from any point of your model and you can use Gnuplot (which is free) as
simple user-end graphical interface to observe the results of your
computations.

Beam propagation, diffraction , interference and even laser resonators can be
modeled with very short and simple shell scripts.

The approach used is absolutely different from ray-tracing, so the package can
not be used for lens design and optimization.

environment

The source code is compact, but to run
it you need fast computer with at least 8 MB RAM and 10 MB of free disk
space. The package was developed and tested on a LINUX/486DX2-66/20MB
computer, which proves to be enough for modeling of simple devices.

keywords

application library; diffraction modeling