I’ve decided that I really wanna do this RIGHT. Last I remembered, I need to read up on vectorial diffraction theory, and then code up a program that does electromagnetic wave propagation (and still respects Maxwell’s equations, on top of the wave equation). This is all because our scheme relies upon a very special adaptive diffractive optic and when we try to publish, we are bound to get critisized by people who think that this scheme somehow violates the Woodward-Lawson-Palmer theorem. So, it all needs to be done extremely carefully.

Perhaps the easiest is to try and code a program that can propagate the field from the origin of the SLM pixel to the point of observation (where the electron is momentarily), then generate the true field by a linear superposition of all the different pixels. I had been propagating focussing Gaussian pulses… but this is leaving strange artifacts, and besides I am not convinced that it is able to fully capture the effects of the SLM.

This task is gonna be HARD and completing it may be a publication in and of itself… we’ll see. :p