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

NameDescriptionUnitsData typeCan change during simualation
SPower suppressionNonefloat

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

NameDescriptionUnitsData typeCan change during simualation
fFocal lengthmfloat

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=0.0 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 0.0.

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

Parameters

NameDescriptionUnitsData typeCan change during simualation
fFrequencyHzfloat
midxModulation indexNonefloat
phasePhasedegreesfloat
orderMaximum modulation orderNoneint
mod_typeModulation type ('am', 'pm')Noneint
positive_onlyPositive onlyNonebool

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 filter_hom=none
Required:

name: Name of element

fc: Central frequency

bandwidth: Filter 3dB bandwidth

Optional:

filter_hom: Individual higher order modes can be filtered and transmitted by setting this to a tuple of (n, m). If None then no mode filtering is done. This cannot be changed during a simulation.

Parameters

NameDescriptionUnitsData typeCan change during simualation
fcCentral frequencyHzfloat
bandwidthBandpass bandwidthHzfloat