The core engine is complete on its own. Capabilities that not everyone needs, or that depend on outside software, ship as plugins: installed separately, loaded through public interfaces, never required by the core.
| plugin | what it adds | page |
|---|---|---|
fitting |
transform elements (fittable physical changes to the beam), the "fit" run mode against the instruments' recorded data (replaceable estimators, priors, three result layers, influence map, fitted system for new inputs), the "backward" run mode (propagate a measured field back to the input), the fit figure. Recorded data itself ("measured") is core: Measured data |
Fitting |
ao |
adaptive optics: deformableMirror and slm (compile to the core modulator), spectralShaper and aopdf pulse shapers; the Python module ultrafast_ao (DmBench, tiled_array) and the algorithms in ultrafast.algorithms (holograms, wavefront control, sensorless optimisers); parametric devices, no vendor data |
Adaptive optics |
twin |
ultrafast twin ... and the Python module ultrafast_twin: a digital-twin project (fit across conditions, validation with held-out conditions and credible bands, experiment design, what-if, drift tracking) |
Digital twin |
zemax |
ultrafast zemax-build, zemax-replay, zemax-demo; the OpticStudio extension program (Windows) |
Zemax |
gpu |
compute back-ends cuda (NVIDIA) and opencl (any double-precision OpenCL GPU): 1-D and spatial nonlinear propagation on the GPU, used by "compute": {"backend": "auto"}; ultrafast devices |
GPU |
hitran |
the air index model "kind": "hitran": Voigt absorption lines and Kramers-Kronig-consistent dispersion of H2O, CO2 and O2 from HITRAN data you download (python -m ultrafast_hitran download H2O); with grid.tail the ring-down of the lines is carried on a long linear grid |
HITRAN |
All six ship with the engine and are installed in the CLI's and the Python package's plugins/ folders by every build.
How to install plugins elsewhere, check them and fix loading problems: Installing plugins. How
plugins are written: Plugin system.