Improvement of Beam Imaging Systems through Optics Propagation Simulations

Abstract

Optical Transition Radiation (OTR) is emitted when a charged particle crosses the interface between two media with different dielectric properties. It has become a wide-spread method for beam profile measurements. However, there are no tools to simulate the propagation of the OTR electric field through an optical system. Simulations using ZEMAX have been performed in order to quantify optical errors, such as aberrations, diffraction, depth of field and misalignment. This paper focuses on simulations of vertically polarized OTR photons with the aim of understanding what limits the resolution of realistic beam imaging systems