The optimal configurations of scanning helium microscopes are geometrical configurations that maximise the intensity of the imaging beam within a given lateral resolution and under certain technological constraints.
When designing a scanning helium microscope, scientists strive to maximise the intensity of the imaging beam while minimising its width. The reason behind this is that the beam's width gives the resolution of the microscope while its intensity is proportional to its signal to noise ratio. Due to their neutrality and high ionisation energy, neutral helium atoms are hard to detect. This makes high-intensity beams a crucial requirement for a viable scanning helium microscope.
In order to generate a high-intensity beam, scanning helium microscopes are designed to generate a supersonic expansion of the gas into vacuum, that accelerates neutral helium atoms to high velocities. Scanning helium microscopes exist in two different configurations: the pinhole configuration and the zone plate configuration. In the pinhole configuration, a small opening (the pinhole) selects a section of the supersonic expansion far away from its origin, which has previously been collimated by a skimmer (essentially, another small pinhole). This section then becomes the imaging beam. In the zone plate configuration a Fresnel zone plate focuses the atoms coming from a skimmer into a small focal spot.
Each of these configurations have different optimal designs, as they are defined by different optics equations.