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Caustics

About

Assortment of Python 3.11 functions and scripts that complement an optics class project on caustics. It includes all the programmes I used to generate my figures. The project in question is intro_to_caustics.pdf.

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How to install

  1. Clone the repo and open it from the CLI.
  2. (Optional) Create a virtual environment with python -m venv venv and venv/Scripts/activate.
  3. Run pip install -r requirements.txt.

All scripts in the project folder should now work.

Contents

The project itself, intro_to_caustics.pdf, gives a brief mathematical overview of caustics. The images folder contains all the figures I generated for it. As for the Python files, they do the following:

  1. catastrophes.py: Generates a figure with elementary catastrophes of codim <= 3 when run.
  2. caustics.py: Contains two functions, catacaustic(u,v,x,y) and diacaustic(u,v,x,y,mu), which calculate and plot the direction of the first deflection of rays on some 2D boundary — the shape of the boundary is specified by (u,v) and the direction of incident rays is specified by (x,y). The file also contains the parent function caustic(u,v,x,y,d), with a modifiable deflection equation d.
  3. dispersion.py: When run renders the caustic of colours created by dispersion of a white light beam in an optical prism.
  4. farfield.py: When run generates a random wavefront propagating along the optical axis Z, and its far field caustics.