Surface Interactions in Photon Monte Carlo Simulations

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed Monte Carlo simulation framework for photon surface interactions, accounting for various surface types, coatings, micro-roughness, and contamination effects, with applications in astronomy and beyond.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, electromagnetic-based Monte Carlo model for simulating photon interactions with complex surfaces, including multilayer coatings and micro-roughness effects.

Findings

Agreement with observed PSF wings of WIYN ODI data

Ability to distinguish mirror roughness from turbulence effects

Effective simulation of dust and contamination impacts

Abstract

We implement a comprehensive simulation of photon surface interactions using a Monte Carlo approach. This is effective in simulating the interaction of light with telescope mirrors and lenses. We use a full electromagnetic solution to simulate the wavelength and angular dependence at surfaces. This includes bare interfaces, monolayer interfaces, protected layer coatings, and multilayer coatings. We handle special cases when multilayer data is incomplete or when there is photo-conversion in the interface as with sensors. We implement interactions with surface micro-roughness and predict the corresponding angular distribution using a Monte Carlo implementation of the Harvey-Shack scatter theory for a microroughness power spectrum. Finally, we simulate surface interaction with contamination from dust or condensation using Mie scattering applied efficiently to individual contaminants. The combination of these implementations can efficiently simulate rough to polished surfaces of arbitrary materials that are fully cleaned or dusty. The observational consequences includes complex wavelength and spatial-dependent photometric errors, the dominant effect of the wings of point-spread-functions, dust rings, and wavelength and angle-dependent throughput losses. We find agreement with the point-spread-function wings of WIYN ODI observations of bright stars and properties of dust rings, and demonstrate the ability to disentangle mirror microroughness from the turbulence PSF patterns. The comprehensive numerical implementation of surface interactions has wide applicability in non-astronomical applications as well.