Recent developments in SHADOW

Abstract

SHADOW is the ray-tracing program of choice for the synchrotron radiation community. The program can raytrace essentially any x-ray optical system and predict image shapes and intensities with great accuracy. Several new extensions have been included. The optical database has been extended to the 10-eV region by inclusion of the new data from the Center for X-ray Optics, Lawrence Berkeley Lab. Two major physical models have been added to the code; the first being a surface roughness model to add to the error surface option. The second addition is to the crystal model. It now includes an asymmetric crystal, a model of a mosaic crystal, and a model for the Johannson case of a figured, bent crystal. Until now, SHADOW has operated under Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC) VMS operating system (VMS). The advent of powerful RISC workstations has prompted a porting to the UNIX environment, opening a multiplatform operability. So far, the code has been validated for Ultrix (DEC) and is undergoing beta testing for Sun operating system and IBM Corporation’s AIX operating system. Porting to a 386/486 platform is also considered. Finally, an optimization algorithm based on a combination of the Simplex and simulated annealing is being implemented.