HOW TO RUN

1. Create and activate virtual env, and install dependencies (Windows example below), or install dependency packages from requirements.txt in your global env. ../reyrey > python -m venv myenv ../reyrey > myenv\Scripts\activate ../reyrey (myenv) > pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Run GUI.py ../reyrey (myenv) > python src\GUI.py

3. Exit venv when done ../reyrey (myenv) > deactivate

User instructions

The program is a GUI interface for designing optical beamlines for reshaping of laser beams based on Ray transfer matrix analysis. The program provides the following functionality:

• Design a beam shaping line by inserting optical components and setting the input beam parameters
• Design linear and ribbon cavities (Or add your own)
• Calculate and plot beam waist transformations based on the optical line components
• Save & Load optical line configurations for future use

In the savestates/samples folder there are example setups for playing around.

Note that if cavity parameters are unstable, currently the cavity calculations simply fail and produce null output (no plot). To get a stable cavity to start optimizing parameters from one can use as an initial guess:

l_focus = l_free = 1.2 * R_focus and theta = 10 deg.

Note: Typically the optimisation for a SHG cavity should aim on smallest round waist at focus arm, and matching the beamline focus on the free arm focus as best you can. With a ribbon cavity the free arm focus is typically elliptical, so getting a perfect matching is a tad tough with a circular beam => Match between (see sample HRG486MM).

Explanation of the UI:

See GUIdoc.md

Important notes

• For the time being, all length parameters are depicted in meters, unless otherwise specified. Will get around to clarifying that later.

Structure of project:

• main.py is responsible for running the main program loop
• calctest.py is a test script for checking that ray transfer calculations are working ok, not needed for operation.
• GUI components are located in the aptly named GUI_components folder.
• GUI_LineGUI.py imports different types of optical line components and arranges them inside the main window
• GUI_OptLineProto.py defines the prototype class for optical lines. Use this as base if you want to build a new type of optical system.
• Specific optical systems should be defined in their own files, e.g. GUI_OpticalLine.py and GUI_cavities.py implementing free optical beamlines and ribbon & linear optical cavities, respectively.
• Ray transfer calculation code is in the GUI_components/raycalc folder. If one wishes to implement new types of optical components for optical beams, they should be added to matrices.py.
• Project documentation and planning found in docs/projectdocum.md

TODO:

• Find a workaround for scatterplot autoscaling not working (matplotlib issue, does not support scatter collection)
• Figure out what goes wrong when old savestate missing parameter added later

Credit

Credit to Artem Golovizin for providing the original reference code for the ray transfer matrix calculations, and helping me figure out what was wrong with mine!