PAOS

Introduction

PAOS, the Physical Optics Simulator, is a fast, modern, and reliable Python package for Physical Optics studies.

It implements Physical Optics Propagation in Fresnel approximation and paraxial ray tracing to analyze complex waveform propagation through both generic and off-axes optical systems.

Table of contents

• PAOS
  • Introduction
  • Table of contents
  • How to install
    • Install from PyPI
    • Install from source code
      • Test your installation
  • Documentation
    • Build the html documentation
    • Build the pdf documentation
  • How to contribute
  • How to cite

How to install

Instructions on how to install PAOS.

Install from PyPI

PAOS is available on PyPI and can be installed via pip as

pip install paos

Install from source code

PAOS is compatible (tested) with Python 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10

To install from source, clone the repository and move inside the directory.

Then use pip as

pip install .

Test your installation

Try importing PAOS as

python -c "import paos; print(paos.__version__)"

Or running PAOS itself with the help flag as

paos -h

Or the Graphical User Interface with the help flag as

paosgui -h

If there are no errors then the installation was successful!

Documentation

PAOS comes with an extensive documentation, which can be built using Sphinx. The documentation includes a tutorial, a user guide and a reference guide.

To build the documentation, install the needed packages first via:

pip install -e ".[docs]"

Build the html documentation

To build the html documentation, move into the docs directory and run

make html

The documentation will be produced into the build/html directory inside docs. Open index.html to read the documentation.

Build the pdf documentation

To build the pdf, move into the docs directory and run

make latexpdf

The documentation will be produced into the build/latex directory inside docs. Open paos.pdf to read the documentation.

The developers use pdflatex; if you have another compiler for LaTex, please refer to sphinx documentation.

How to contribute

You can contribute to PAOS by reporting bugs, suggesting new features, or contributing to the code itself. If you wish to contribute to the code, please follow the steps described in the documentation under Developer guide.

How to cite

A dedicated publication has been submitted and the relative information will be published soon. In the meanwhile, please, send an email to the developers.