Optics

Common optical building blocks are provided for building up an optical system. Some have more detailed pages which are listed in the table of contents below.

Directional Beamsplitter

directional_beamsplitter
dbs

Represents a directional beamsplitter optical component.

Syntax

dbs name

Required

name: Name of newly created directional beamsplitter.

Isolator

isolator
isol

Represents an isolator optical component with a suppression factor.

Syntax

isol name S=0.0

Required

name: Name of newly created isolator.

S: Power suppression in dB.

Parameters

Name Description Units Data type Can change during simualation
S Power suppression float

Lens

lens

Represents a thin lens optical component with an associated focal length.

Syntax

lens name f=inf

Required

name: Name of newly created lens.

Optional

f: Focal length of the lens in metres; defaults to infinity.

Parameters

Name Description Units Data type Can change during simualation
f Focal length m float

Modulator

modulator
mod

Represents a modulator optical component with associated properties such as modulation frequency, index and order.

Syntax

mod name f midx order=1 mod_type=pm phase=0 positive_only=false

Required

name: Name of newly created modulator.

midx: Modulation index, >= 0.

Optional

f: Frequency of the modulation (in Hz) or Frequency object.

order: Maximum order of modulations to produce. Must be 1 for amplitude modulation. Defaults to 1.

mod_type: Modulation type, either ‘am’ (amplitude modulation) or ‘pm’ (phase modulation). Defaults to ‘pm’.

phase: Relative phase of modulation (in degrees). Defaults to 0.

positive_only: If True, only produce positive-frequency sidebands. Defaults to False.

Parameters

Name Description Units Data type Can change during simualation
f Frequency Hz float
midx Modulation index float
phase Phase degrees float
order Maximum modulation order int
mod_type Modulation type ('am', 'pm') int
positive_onlyPositive only bool

Optical Bandpass

optical_bandpass
obp

An idealised optical bandpass filter that will transmit an optical frequency around some central frequency with a 3dB bandwidth.

Syntax

obp name fc=0 bandwidth=1000

Required

name: Name of element

fc: Central frequency

bandwidth: Filter 3dB bandwidth

Parameters

Name Description Units Data type Can change during simualation
fc Central frequency Hz float
bandwidthBandpass bandwidth Hz float