Ray tracing simulations for crystal optics

Manuel Sanchez del Rio

European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
BP 220, 38043 Grenoble-Cedex, France

ABSTRACT
A review of the physical models for crystal optics in a ray tracing program is presented. X-ray monochromators
and analyzers for synchrotron radiation applications in both Bragg (reflection) and Laue (transmission) geometries
can be simulated with this method. Ray tracing calculations for several high-resolution and focusing geometries
are presented, demonstrating the suitability of the ray tracing method for the design and optimization x-ray crystal
optics. Possible applications to study the crystal effects on partially coherent beams are also outlined.
All these systems have been modeled in the framework of the ray tracing program SHADOW. For increasing the
visual and post-processing functionality of SHADOW we developed a front-end library and a Visual User Interface
available from the author.

Keywords: x-ray tracing, perfect crystals, modeling, high-resolution, focusing crystals, coherence