FANM: A software for focus and aberrations of nuclear microprobe

Abstract

Focus and Aberrations of Nuclear Microprobe (FANM) is a new beam optics package to achieve fast and accurate design of a nuclear microprobe. FANM achieves a balance between speed of focusing and accuracy of high order aberrations. A combined method proposed in FANM is to achieve focusing conditions using a matrix method and to calculate aberration coefficients using a numerical ray tracing method. FANM has two optional optimization algorithms (derivative-free method and particle swarm optimization), offering a powerful choice for multi-variable optimization. Numeric variables in FANM are stored as 64-bit (8-byte) double-precision floating-point values to reduce calculation errors. Results obtained with FANM are compared with six existing computational tools (PRAM, TRANSPORT-PSI, TRANSPORT-PBO, WinTRAX, GEANT4-nanobeam and Zgoubi). The reasons for discrepancies between the different packages are discussed. Calculated currents of magnetic quadrupole lenses obtained with FANM are compared with experimental values of a nuclear microprobe in the National University of Singapore.