Plot 2D Gaussian spot and histograms of horizontal and vertical axis in one figure

I am simulating a spot of a Gaussian laser beam. I've added my simple code below. It creates three figures: one plot of the Gaussian spot itself, and two plots of the histograms of the vertical coordinates and horizontal coordinates. What I would like to do is create one figure with these three plots, with the histograms along their corresponding axes. I've added an example of this below that I created by combining the figures in MS Paint.

I would like to create this picture in MATLAB instead, does anyone know if this is possible? If yes, how?

Thank you in advance.

% Parameters of the Gaussian beam
M2              = 1.45;             % M-squared, beam propagation factor
lambda          = 800E-9;           % Wavelength of the light [m]
w_init          = 0.010;            % Initial beam waist before the mirror [m]
sigma_pos       = w_init/2;         % Standard deviation of the initial Gaussian position distribution [m]

% Generating the random positions of 10000 light rays according to a
% Gaussian distribution
Nrays = 10000;                       % Number of rays
sigma_posy = sigma_pos/sqrt(2);
sigma_posz = sigma_posy;
qy0 = normrnd(0, sigma_posy, 1, Nrays);
qz0 = normrnd(0, sigma_posz, 1, Nrays);

% Plotting spot
figure()
box on
plot(qz0, qy0, 'b.')
xlabel('z [m]')
ylabel('y [m]')
axis square

%% Histogram plot
figure()
box on
histfit(sqrt(2)*qz0)
xlim([-0.015 0.015])
ylabel('Intensity')

figure()
box on
histfit(sqrt(2)*qy0)
xlim([-0.015 0.015])
ylabel('Intensity')

Answer 1

[Rohit Pappu]

The above diagram can be created using subplot (for creating the grid of plots) and camroll (for rotating the histogram)

% Create a 3x3 subplot

% Z intensities
subplot(3,3,[1,2]);
box on
h1 = histfit(sqrt(2)*qz0)
xlim([-0.015 0.015])
ylabel('Intensity')
ax1 = h1.Parent;
set(ax1, 'xticklabel' ,[]);

% Plotting spot
subplot(3,3,[4 5 7 8]);
box on
f = plot(qz0, qy0, 'b.')
xlabel('z [m]')
ylabel('y [m]')
axis square

% Y intensities
subplot(3,3,[6 9])
box on
h2 = histfit(sqrt(2)*qy0)
xlim([-0.015 0.015])
ylabel('Intensity')
ax2 = h2.Parent;
camroll(ax2,-90) % Rotate the plot clockwise by 90 degrees
set(ax2, 'XTickLabel',[]);

[Floris Wulf]

Hi Rohit, thank you very much for your answer. This nearly solves my problem, I just have one small problem left. I've added the figure that I get (with some slight adjustments to the values on the axes) with your code. However, the histogram on the top is wider than the figure with the spot. How can I control the size of the graph itself, and not the figure?

[Rohit Pappu]

Hi Floris, currently, there isn't any function to adjust the size of the graph. A workaround which I would suggest is to increase the subplot size from 3x3 to maybe like 10x10 and then play around with the position argument for each subplot. A higher grid size gives a finer control over the position of each subplot

[Floris Wulf]

Ah OK, that explains it. I will use your proposed workaround, and I'll accept your answer. Thank you very much for your help.