Selecting the modes to model

Models in Finesse are, by default, created as plane-wave representations of the underlying configuration. This can be switched to a modal basis by specifying the mode indices that should be modelled by the system. There are a few key ways in which this can be done, as outlined in the sections below.

Maximum TEM order

Set a value for the maximum TEM (termed maxtem for short) order. Users of previous version of Finesse will be familiar with this option. By setting a value for maxtem, all of the modes up to and including this order will be included in the model. See an example below:

import finesse

model = finesse.Model()
# set maximum mode order (n+m) to 3
model.select_modes(maxtem=3)

print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [0 1]
 [0 2]
 [0 3]
 [1 0]
 [1 1]
 [1 2]
 [2 0]
 [2 1]
 [3 0]]

Note that setting maxtem to zero will also switch the model to a modal basis, where the only mode being modelled then is the TEM00 mode.

You can switch a model back to a plane wave representation by using Model.switch_off_homs() or passing “off” to finesse.model.Model.select_modes().

Selection method

One of the main new features of modelling HOMs in Finesse 3 is the ability to select the modes you want to model rather than including all modes up to a specific order with maxtem. This can be achieved via varied arguments to the finesse.model.Model.select_modes() method. The documentation for this function explains how to use it, so here are a few examples of it in practice.

Selecting even modes up to order 4:

model.select_modes("even", 4)
print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [0 2]
 [0 4]
 [2 0]
 [2 2]
 [4 0]]

Odd modes up to order 3:

model.select_modes("odd", 3)
print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [0 1]
 [0 3]
 [1 0]
 [1 1]
 [3 0]]

Tangential (x) modes up to order 5:

model.select_modes("x", 5)
print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [1 0]
 [2 0]
 [3 0]
 [4 0]
 [5 0]]

Sagittal (y) modes up to maxtem 6:

model.select_modes("y", 6)
print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [0 1]
 [0 2]
 [0 3]
 [0 4]
 [0 5]
 [0 6]]

Assigning to modes property

The finesse.model.Model.homs property that we have seen plenty of times on this page returns a copy of the underlying mode indices array in the model. This property also has a corresponding setter which can be used to set the modes to include directly. Under the hood, this setter simply delegates the set value out to finesse.model.Model.select_modes() - so refer to the API documentation of this function for usage details. A couple of examples of using this setter are shown below.

Add specific modes to the model via a list of strings:

model.homs = ["00", "11", "22"]
print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [1 1]
 [2 2]]

Or a list of tuples (any iterable of length two iterables will work):

model.homs = [(0, 0), (2, 1), (1, 3)]
print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [1 3]
 [2 1]]

Including additional modes

The model class also provides a finesse.model.Model.include_modes() method for inserting additional modes (at the correct, sorted position of the mode indices array) into the existing modes.

For example, one could select even modes up to order 2 but also include the 11 mode with:

model.select_modes("even", 2)
model.include_modes("11")
print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [0 2]
 [1 1]
 [2 0]]

Note

Mode index uniqueness is guaranteed in a model. If you accidentally (or on purpose to try to break stuff) pass repeated modes to a model, then these repeats will be ignored. For example:

# deviously try to repeat first two modes...
model.homs = ["00", "11", "22", "11", "00"]
# ... but this is taken care of
print(model.homs)

[[0 0]
 [1 1]
 [2 2]]

A note on specifying mode indices explicitly

If the modes argument to Model.select_modes() (or, indeed, Model.include_modes() and Model.remove_modes()) is specified as an iterable of mode indices, then care must be taken to define these modes properly. For example, if one tries to do:

model.select_modes(["010", "123"])

then this would result in an exception being raised due to the ambiguity in the mode indices when they are larger than 9. For these large HOM indices, one should instead use tuples (or lists), e.g:

model.select_modes([(0, 10), (12, 3)])

to select the HG(0,10) and HG(12,3) modes.

This principle applies equally to selecting detector masks via MaskedDetector.select_mask().