Manual

OSCAR
A Matlab-based optical FFT code
Jerome Degallaix
OSCAR
The Non-Definitive Guide
First edition July 2008
Second edition October 2008
Third edition April 2009
Fourth edition January 2010
Fifth edition January 2012
Sixth edition June 2012
Seventh edition January 2013
Eight edition September 2013
Ninth edition December 2013
Tenth edition July 2014
Eleventh edition December 2014
Twelfth edition September 2016
Thirteenth edition August 2019
Fourteenth edition June 2020
Fifteenth edition March 2022
OSCAR, the Matlab code, this documentation as well as the examples were written by:
Jerome Degallaix
Laboratoire des Matériaux Avancés (LMA)
Université Claude Bernard Lyon I
7, Avenue Pierre de Coubertin
69622 Villeurbanne
France
THE SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED AS IT IS WITHOUT ANY

WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
MATLAB is a trademark of MathWorks Inc., MA, USA.

OSCAR is an optical FFT code used to calculate the steady state optical
field circulating in Fabry-Perot cavities. The code can integrate non-spherical
mirrors and any arbitrary input fields. Typical applications for OSCAR have
been: calculation of thermal lensing effect and calculation of diffraction loss
and cavity eigenmodes for arbitrary beam shapes. One great advantage of OS-
CAR is the simplicity and flexibility of the code, everyone with only minimal
knowledge of Matlab can easily modify OSCAR code to suit specific purposes.
If you find a bug when using OSCAR, please feel free to contact the author.
Do not hesitate also to report any unclear part from this manual or from
the code itself. Of course, I am also open to suggestions for any possible
improvement.
Contents
Contents iv
1 Principle of the FFT code 1

1.1 Why OSCAR ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Origin of OSCAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Which results could I get from OSCAR ? . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.3 What OSCAR is not for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Propagation of an optical field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.1 Propagation of a plane wave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.2 Propagation of an arbitrary field . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.3 My first Matlab FFT code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Adding realistic optics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3.1 Arbitrary wavefront distortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3.2 Mirrors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3.3 Lenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.4 Aperture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3.5 Code implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4 Simulating a Fabry-Perot cavity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.5 Further reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
I OSCAR V1: the classic version 21
2 The OSCAR code in details 23

2.1 The cavity to simulate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2 Declaration and initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3 Finding the resonance length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.1 Setting the resonance the length . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.2 Finding the resonance length in details . . . . . . . . . . 26
iv
2.3.3 Code implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3.4 Some comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.4 Calculating the circulating field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.5 Displaying the results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.6 Calculating the cavity eigenmodes and diffraction loss . . . . . 34
2.7 A typical OSCAR run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.8 Script and function list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3 Applications 39
3.1 Distortion of the optical field due to thermal lensing . . . . . . 39
3.2 Calculating diffraction losses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3 Using flat beams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.4 Deriving a Pound-Drever-Hall locking signal . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.5 Simulation of a three-mirror ring cavity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
II OSCAR V3: the Object-Oriented version 59
4 The big changes 61

4.1 Motivation and goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.2 The new objects and how to use them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.2.1 The class Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.2.2 The class E field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.2.3 The class Prop operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.2.4 The class Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.2.5 The class Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.2.6 The class Cavity1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.2.7 The class CavityN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.2.8 The class Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.3 What to expect in the following versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5 New examples of simulations 79

5.1 Beam parameters after a thick lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5.2 Calculating diffraction loss and circulating power . . . . . . . . 80
5.3 Scan of a misaligned cavity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.4 Mirror maps and higher order modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.5 Plotting a Pound-Drever-Hall error signal . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.6 4-mirror linear cavity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.7 Calculating the eigenmodes of a Fabry-Perot cavity . . . . . . . 86
Bibliography 87
IIIAppendix 91
A Analytical formulation of the Gaussian beam propagation

using Fourier transform 93
B Finesse script 97
C Details of OSCAR 3.0 classes 99

C.1 Class Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C.2 Class E Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C.3 Class Prop operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C.4 Class Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C.5 Class Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C.6 Class Cavity1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C.7 Class CavityN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
D They have found OSCAR useful... 105

D.1 Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
D.2 Articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Acknowledgements 109
Chapter 1
Principle of the FFT code
In this chapter, we detail the two main steps used to propagate an electric
field in a Fabry-Perot cavity. Firstly we will understand how the propagation
of an arbitrary electric field can be simulated using a Fourier transform. And
secondly, we will see how any wavefront distortion encountered by the electric
field can be included in the numerical simulations. Whenever possible, some
simple Matlab codes are presented to show the numerical implementation of
the algorithm. For clarity, the snippets of code are not optimized.
1.1 Why OSCAR ?

OSCAR is a FFT code which is able to simulate Fabry-Perot cavities with
arbitrary mirror profiles. One of the key features of OSCAR is the possibility
to easily modify the code to suit the user purpose. For this reason, OSCAR is
written with the Matlab language, one can import/export files (mirror maps
or cavity eigenmode profiles for example), create a ring cavity, create batch
file or plot 2D optical fields with little programming skill1 . The fact that I
encourage everyone to understand the code of OSCAR in details and to also
modify it, is the main reason for this lengthy manual.
1.1.1 Origin of OSCAR

I started writing and using OSCAR during my PhD where I had to simu-
late the effects of thermal lensing in high optical power cavities. Wavefront
1
The code can also be used with the free Matlab-alternatives such as Sci-Lab or Octave
with only minor modifications. Even a minimal Python version exists.
1
2 CHAPTER 1. PRINCIPLE OF THE FFT CODE
distortions induced by the optical absorption have seldom pure spherical pro-
files, which means it is delicate to quantify thermal lensing effects with modal
expansion code (but still possible). To simulate the effects of the optical
absorption on the mirror, I was using the FEM package Ansys which can cal-
culate the temperature distribution inside the mirror substrate or the surface
deformations due to the absorption of a Gaussian beam. From the Ansys
results, it is straightforward to calculate the wavefront distortion induced by
thermal lensing. However, at this stage, I was faced with a problem : how
can I estimate the effects of the thermal lens if it has to be inserted in a
Fabry-Perot cavity ? How much will the circulating power decrease ? Will
the cavity optical modes keep their Gaussian profiles ? I needed an optical
simulation tool which can be used with any arbitrary mirror profile. OSCAR
was born. For the inquisitive reader, the name OSCAR is the acronym of
Optical Simulation Containing Ansys Results.
The first version of OSCAR was written with the software IGOR. This code
was then translated in Matlab and used to calculate diffraction losses by my
UWA colleague Pablo Barriga. Finally, I re-wrote and optimized the Matlab
code to substantially decrease the OSCAR computational time. During the
year 2011, OSCAR was totally revamped using the Oriented Object capability
of Matlab giving rise to the Version 3.0.
1.1.2 Which results could I get from OSCAR ?

OSCAR is a versatile tool to simulate Fabry-Perot cavities. The following is
a (non-exhaustive) list of the results which can be obtained with OSCAR:
calculate the Gouy phase shift between higher order optical modes. It
may be useful for flat beams for example, where no analytical calcula-
tions of the Gouy phase shift has been derived yet (as far as I know)
calculate the coupling loss between the input beam and the cavity eigen-
modes in case of mode mismatching
calculate the circulating beam (intensity and profile) inside the cavity,
which may be different from the eigenmodes if the cavity has a low
finesse
calculate diffraction loss and eigenmodes of cavity for arbitrary mirror

profiles
calculate the effects of imperfect optics, due to the micro-roughness of

the coating surface or thermal lens inside the substrate of the mirrors.
1.2. PROPAGATION OF AN OPTICAL FIELD 3
Even more complicated configuration could be simulated such as dual re-

cycled Michelson with Fabry-Perot arm cavities (topology of advanced laser
gravitational wave detectors). Although the code is more complex and lacking
exhaustive documentation, it is available on demand.
1.1.3 What OSCAR is not for

OSCAR is designed to simulate anything that can be derived from the steady
state, classical, optical field circulating inside a Fabry-Perot cavity. It means
OSCAR does not take into account radiation pressure or quantum effects (no
shot noise calculations).
1.2 Propagation of an optical field

In this section we will see how it is possible to propagate a coherent electric
field, i.e. a laser beam, with the help of the Fourier transform. The principle
of the FFT optical propagation code is similar to the Fourier transformation
method used to calculate the response of a linear system to an arbitrary func-
tion fi (t). The function fi (t) is expressed as a continuous superposition of
harmonic functions of different frequencies ν:
Z ∞
fi (t) = fei (ν) exp(2πjνt)dν (1.1)
−∞
Where fei is the Fourier transform of the function fi . The function t →

exp(2πjνt) is the harmonic function of frequency ν. These are the basic
functions used to expand fi . If the response of the system is known for each
elementary harmonic function exp(2πjνt), the response of the system to the
input fi can be derived using three steps. First step, the function fi is ex-
panded in the sum of basic harmonic functions by doing a Fourier transfor-
mation. Second step the response of the system to each harmonic function is
calculated. This is done simply by a multiplication in the frequency domain.
Finally, third step, the output of the system to the input fi is derived by do-
ing the inverse Fourier transformation of the output harmonic functions (step
similar to the equation 1.1).
The FFT optical propagation code follows exactly the principle described
in the previous paragraph. In this case the elementary functions are plane
waves of different spatial frequencies.
Figure 1.1: Propagation of a plane wave along the z axis.
1.2.1 Propagation of a plane wave

We can first understand how to propagate of an elementary plane wave u
through free space. At z = 0, u can be simply written:
u(x, y, 0) = exp(−jkx x − jky y) (1.2)
with kx/y the propagation constant along the x/y axis. Equation (1.2) can
also be written:
u(x, y, 0) = exp(−j2π(νx x+νy y)) with νx = kx /(2π) and νy = ky /(2π) (1.3)
If u is written as shown in equation (1.3), it is easy to recognize u as a

harmonic function of two variables (x, y) with respective spatial frequencies 2
(νx , νy ). If we propagate u along the z axis over a distance d:
u(x, y, d) = exp(−jkx x − jky y − jkz d) (1.4)

1
with k = (kx2 +ky2 +kz2 ) 2 = 2π/λ. If we consider a wave traveling in a direction
close to the z axis (paraxial approximation) as shown in figure 1.1, kz kx
2
The term spatial frequency ν must be understood as the number of wavelengths per
unit of length ν = 1/λ = k/2π
and kz ky , then kz can be written as:
1 (kx2 + ky2 )
kz = (k 2 − kx2 − ky2 ) 2 ' k− (1.5)
2k
' k − λπ(νx2 + νy2 ) (1.6)
So we can rewrite equation (1.4) as:
u(x, y, d) = u(x, y, 0) exp(−j(k − λπ(νx2 + νy2 ))d) (1.7)
The equation (1.7) is the foundation of the FFT propagation code. It

tells us that the propagation of a plane wave along the z axis over a dis-
tance d can simply be represented by a phase shift. The function d →
exp(−j(k − λπ(νx2 + νy2 ))d) could also be seen as the propagation operator
for an input plane wave traveling a distance d under the paraxial approxi-
mation. The term exp(−j(kd)) represents the phase shift of a plane wave
propagating along the z axis and the term exp(jλπ(νx2 + νy2 )d) adds a phase
correction to take into account the fact that the wave propagates with a small
angle with respect to the z axis3 .
We noticed in equation (1.3), that the elementary plane wave u(x, y, 0)

can also be seen as a harmonic function with spatial frequency νx and νy .
To keep the analogy developed in the introduction of this chapter with the
classical time-domain Fourier transform, the plane wave is equivalent to the
elementary harmonic function t → exp(2πjνt) of frequency ν. Since we know
how to propagate a plane wave, we understand now how it may be possible to
propagate any arbitrary field if we can manage to expand it as a superposition
of elementary plane waves.
1.2.2 Propagation of an arbitrary field

Equation (1.7) tells us how to propagate a plane wave. So to propagate an
arbitrary electric field E, we need to know how to expand the electric field
onto the set of plane waves exp(−j2π(νx x + νy y)). We would like to find
E(ν
e x , νy ) such that :
Z ∞ Z ∞
E(x, y) = E(ν
e x , νy ) exp(−j2π(νx x + νy y))dνx dνy (1.8)
−∞ −∞
3
The angle θx between the direction of propagation and the x axis is θx = sin−1 (kx /k).
In the case of small angles, it is simply θx = λνx
With E(νe x , νy ) the complex amplitude of the component of the field E

with spatial frequency (νx , νy ). We recognize equation (1.8) as an inverse 2D
Fourier transform4 . Using the properties of the Fourier transform[2] we deduce
the expression for E(ν
e x , νy ):
Z ∞Z ∞
E(ν
e x , νy ) = E(x, y) exp(j2π(νx x + νy y))dxdy (1.9)
−∞ −∞
Combining equations (1.7), (1.8) and (1.9) , we know how to propagate in

free space a transverse electric field E from z = 0 to z = d. To calculate the
resulting field after the propagation, three steps are required:
1. Decomposition of the field E(x, y, 0) into a sum of elementary plane

waves. Mathematically, this step represents a 2D Fourier transforma-
tion.
Z ∞ Z ∞
E(ν
e x , νy , 0) = E(x, y, 0) exp(j2π(νx x + νy y))dxdy (1.10)
−∞ −∞
2. Propagation of each plane wave, which is equivalent to adding a phase

shift in the frequency domain.
E(ν e x , νy , 0) exp(−j(k − λπ(νx2 + νy2 ))d)

e x , νy , d) = E(ν (1.11)
3. Re-composition of the electric field from the propagated plane waves.

This step is in fact an inverse Fourier transformation.
Z ∞ Z ∞
E(x, y, d) = E(ν
e x , νy , d) exp(−j2π(νx x + νy y))dνx dνy (1.12)
−∞ −∞
1.2.3 My first Matlab FFT code

There is an essential point to realize before implementing the three analytical
steps described in the previous section. The computer does not deal with
continuous electric fields, which means that all the data fields have to be
discretized. For example the amplitude of a Gaussian beam will be represented
4
In fact, if we respect the convention found in signal processing technique, equation (1.8)
is not an inverse Fourier transform but a Fourier transform[1]. It is not tragic, since we will
stay consistent with the convention presented here.
Listing 1.1: Discretization of a Gaussian beam

Grid.Num point = 128; % Number of points in one side the grid
Grid.Length = 0.10; % Physical dimension of the grid in meters
Grid.step = Grid.Length/Grid.Num point; % Physical size of one pixel of the grid
Grid.vector = 1:Grid.Num point; % Grid.vector = 1 2 3 ... Grid.Num point

% Calculate the spatial scale used for each pixel :
Grid.axis = −Grid.Length/2 + Grid.step/2 + (Grid.vector−1)*Grid.step;
Field .Gaussian = zeros(Grid.Num point,Grid.Num point,’double’);

Laser.amplitude = 1; % Arbitrary amplitude
Laser.waist = 0.01; % waist of the laser beam in meters
% Fill the matrix representing the ( real ) Gaussian beam:

for m = 1:Grid.Num point
for n = 1:Grid.Num point
Field .Gaussian(m,n) = Laser.amplitude * exp(−(Grid.axis(m)ˆ2+Grid.axis(n)ˆ2)/Laser.waistˆ2);
end
end
by a square matrix (called also grid later), each point of the matrix (called
also pixel for convenience) will represent the amplitude of the Gaussian beam
at a defined location. A 2D plot of such a matrix is shown in the top left
corner of the figure 1.2.
Practically, the discretization process is governed by the choice of 2 param-
eters: the physical size represented by the matrix and the number of points
in the matrix. For example, to discretize a laser beam with a beam radius of
1 cm we can use a matrix of size 128 × 128 representing an area of 10 cm by
10 cm. This example can be implemented in Matlab in a straightforward way
as shown in the listing 1.1.
If the scale of the matrix (called Grid.axis in the listing 1.1) representing
the amplitude distribution is easy to understand, a more delicate point is
the scaling of the Fourier transform of the input beam. This scaling of the
spatial frequency is required since we need to know the spatial frequency
represented by each pixel of the discrete Fourier transform of the Gaussian
beam. Concretely we need to know the discrete values of νx , νy from equation
1.10.
First thing to understand is that the discrete Fourier transform of a 2D
complex matrix is also a 2D complex matrix with the same dimensions [3].
The low spatial frequencies are located in the middle of the matrix and the
high spatial frequencies on the edge. Typically if the original matrix has for
dimensions N × N , the spatial frequency 0 (the average component) is located

at the index (N/2 + 1, N/2 + 1)5 . Meanwhile, the frequency separation ∆ν
between 2 adjacent pixels of the Fourier matrix is:
1 1
∆ν = = (1.13)
Grid.Length N × Grid.step
With Grid.Length and Grid.step the variables defined in the listing 1.1. So
the minimal (negative) spatial frequency calculated is −N/2 ∗ ∆ν often called
the Nyquist frequency and the maximal spatial frequency is (N/2 − 1) ∗ ∆ν.
An example for the frequency scale of the Fourier transform of the matrix is
presented in the top right plot of the figure 1.2.
Special attention must be taken to understand the vertical and horizontal
scales in the figure 1.2. The numbers written for the scales are in fact the
value of the scale between 2 pixels as can be seen by zooming on the ticks.
For example, to know what is the spatial frequency of the first top row (hor-
izontal line) of the Fourier matrix on the top right plot which represents the
maximal spatial frequency, we have to take the average of the top two ticks.
So the maximal spatial frequency is 1/2 ∗ (96.875 + 90.625) = 93.75m−1 , which
is as expected equal to (N/2 − 1) ∗ ∆ν = 15/0.16 = 93.75
One natural question we could ask is : what is the good size of the grid ?
The size of the grid must be large enough to represent faithfully the Gaussian
beam, no substantial energy from the beam must lay outside the grid. So the
dimension of the grid must be at least 3-4 times bigger than the biggest beam
diameter encountered. A large grid size is also important to sample properly
the low special frequency as shown at the bottom of figure 1.2. Remarkably,
even if the laser beam radius increases as the beam propagates from its waist,
the amplitude of the Fourier transform is constant along the propagation. In-
deed the propagation as shown in equation 1.11 is simply represented by a
phase shift in the Fourier domain.
After the physical size of the grid has been chosen, the second impor-
tant parameter to be decided is the number of points in the grid. Because of
the way the discrete Fourier transform is calculated in the FFT algorithm, it
is strongly recommended to choose the number of points for the side of the
matrix to be a power of 2. Usually a good compromise between speed and
accuracy is given for N =64,128 or 256. The influence of the number of points
5
In fact the FFT algorithm returns the Fourier transform of the input matrix with
the low spatial frequency spread at the four corners of the matrix. However for a better
readability, the low frequencies are then shifted back to the center of the matrix.
x axis (m)
Figure 1.2: Example of the influence of the physical size of the grid and
the number of points used for the representation of a Gaussian beam (left
column) and its Fourier transform (right column). As expected intuitively, to
have a proper representation of both the Gaussian beam and its Fourier trans-
form, it is essential to have simultaneously a large space window (parameter:
Grid.Length) and a large number of points (parameter: Grid.Num point). For
this example the waist of the laser beam is 4 cm.
on the accuracy of the results can (and should) always be checked by doing
the same simulations with different meshings of the grid.
The size of the grid divided by the number of pixels is the dimension
represented by one pixel, in other word the resolution of the grid (variable
Grid.step). Of course, the resolution of the grid must match the size of the
physical feature we would like to simulate. For example it is useless to try to
simulate the effect of features having a size 1 mm in a mirror map with a grid
resolution of 1 cm.
We just saw how a square matrix can be used to represent a discrete elec-
tric field, so now we can try to simulate its propagation using the 3 consecutive
steps described by equations (1.10), (1.11) and (1.12). During the second step,
the Fourier transform of the electric field is multiplied by a complex number
depending of the distance of propagation and also the spatial frequency. Prac-
tically, this multiplication is achieved by multiplying pixel by pixel 2 matrices
: the Fourier transform matrix and a propagation matrix. The propagation
matrix is usually defined beforehand and only once, since it will be used re-
peatedly as we will see later in section 1.4. The Matlab code at the core of
the FFT code is presented in the listing 1.2, it is the direct sequel from the
previous listing where we defined the matrix used to represent the electric field.
The propagation of an electric field using a FFT code is an extremely pow-

erful tool. With the FFT code we can propagate any arbitrary profile of the
laser beam, not only the beams from the usual Hermite-Gaussian set. Such
an example is presented in figure 1.3. The code used to produce these two
plots is given with the OSCAR distribution, the name of the Matlab script is
My First FFT code.m. The initial field is a theoretical square of uniform am-
plitude (left plot). The resulting field after the propagation in free space over
100 m is shown in the right plot. A similar result could have been obtained
based on the propagation of Hermite-Gaussian modes. However to have an
accurate representation of the initial field, a very large number of the higher
order modes must be taken into account, which requires large amounts of
computer processing power. The field is discretized on a 1024 × 1024 matrix.
The physical size of the grid is 16 cm × 16 cm.
We arrive now at the end of this section, which is dedicated to under-

standing how we can numerically simulate the propagation of an arbitrary
laser beam. However having a code only capable of propagating a beam is
seldom useful. We are usually more interested in simulating real optical sys-
Listing 1.2: The code used to propagate the matrix Field.Start
% Distance of propagation in meters

Distance prop = 100;
% Spatial frequency of the pixels in the Fourier space

Grid. axis fft = −1/(2*Grid.step) + (Grid.vector−1)*1/(Grid.Num point*Grid.step);
% Define the propagation matrix
Mat propagation = zeros(Grid.Num point,Grid.Num point,’double’);

Mat propagation(m,n) = exp(i*(−Laser.k prop*Distance prop + ...

pi *Laser.lambda*(Grid.axis fft(m)ˆ2 + Grid.axis fft(n).ˆ2)*Distance prop));
end
end
%−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Propagate the field −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−
Field .Fourier = fftshift ( fft2 (Field . Start )); % Do the Fourier transform of the input field
Field .Fourier = Field.Fourier .* Mat propagation; % Do the propagation in the frequency domain
Field .End = ifft2( ifftshift (Field .Fourier )); % Do the inverse Fourier transform
% As a result Field .End represents Field.Start propagated over 100 meters
tem with mirrors, apertures and imperfect optics. How to include optics in
the code is the subject of the next section.
Figure 1.3: Propagation of an uniform square of light using our FFT prop-
agation code. The initial square light field is presented on the left plot. The
field resulting from the propagation of the initial field over 100 m is shown
on the right plot. Structures similar to the Hermite-Gaussian modes begin to
emerge when the square field propagates in free space.
1.3. ADDING REALISTIC OPTICS 13
1.3 Adding realistic optics

It is time now to introduce in our simulation two essential optical components:
mirrors and lenses. These components alter the beam wavefront radius of
curvature and are therefore used for beam shaping (in other words : they
make the laser beam smaller or bigger). This can be easily implemented in
OSCAR as we will discover in the following paragraphs.
1.3.1 Arbitrary wavefront distortion

Any wavefront distortion can be characterized by its induced optical path
length difference ∆OP L(x, y). In a general manner, when the laser beam
crosses a medium of non-uniform refractive index n(x, y, z) the optical path
length OP L(x, y) along the optical axis parallel to the s direction can be
defined as:
Z L
OP L(x, y) = n(x, y, z)dz (1.14)
0
With L the length of the medium. Since we are not interested in any
constant offset due to the optical path length, it is often more relevant to
introduce the optical path length difference ∆OP L as:
Z L Z L
∆OP L(x, y) = n(x, y, z)dz − n(0, 0, z)dz (1.15)
0 0
The laser field Ei passing trough an element inducing a wavefront distor-
tion characterized by ∆OP N (x, y) get an additional space dependent phase
shift according to:
Eo (x, y) = Ei (x, y) exp (−jk∆OP L(x, y)) (1.16)
As we can see the effect of the wavefront distortion can be implemented

in the physical space and it is not related to any Fourier transform. In fact
in any optical FFT code, the Fourier transform is only used to propagate the
electric field over a certain distance. All other calculations are made in the
usual physical space.
1.3.2 Mirrors
One of the most useful wavefront distortions is the one induced by mirrors. A
mirror is a reflective spherical surface which is used to steer (flat mirror) or
focus the beam (convergent or divergent mirrors). From simple geometrical
Figure 1.4: Example of the optical path difference induced by 1 km radius

of curvature mirror. The optical path difference is simply twice the sagitta
of the mirror. The right plot is the left plot discretised on a grid of 32 × 32
pixels.
considerations (see the top left plot in figure 1.4) we can calculate the change
in sagitta ∆s as a function of ∆r the distance from the mirror center:
p
∆s = Rof C − Rof C 2 − ∆r2 (1.17)
With Rof C the radius of curvature of the mirror. The optical path differ-
ence is simply twice the sagitta:
p
∆OP L(x, y) = 2 Rof C − Rof C 2 − (x2 + y 2 ) (1.18)
Of course since we are using a numerical simulation, the optical path dif-
ference representing the mirror has also to be discretized using the same grid
as the one used for the laser beam. A discretized optical path difference for a
mirror is represented on the right part in the figure 1.4.
There is no difficulty in creating with Matlab the matrix used to represent
the optical path difference induced by a mirror. The value of the optical path
as a function of the coordinate (x, y) has previously been shown in equation
1.18. The direct Matlab implementation is presented in the listing 1.3. By
definition, in OSCAR a concave mirror has a positive radius of curvature,
which means the optical path difference is negative.
Listing 1.3: The code used to create the mirror matrix
% Definition of the mirror radius of curvature in meters

Mirror.RofC = 1000;
% Create mirror grid

Mirror.OPL = zeros(Grid.Num point,Grid.Num point,’double’);

Radius sqr = (Grid.axis(m)ˆ2+Grid.axis(n)ˆ2);

Mirror.OPL(m,n) = −2*(Mirror.RofC − sqrt(Mirror.RofCˆ2 − Radius sqr));
end
end
If the mirror is not perfectly spherical because of thermal lensing effect or

because the mirrors are part of a flat beam cavity, we simply have to modify
the equation 1.18 accordingly by adding the known deviation.
1.3.3 Lenses
In OSCAR, we use the exact same procedure as for mirrors to simulate lenses.
The optical path difference induced by the lens is the same as that induced
by a mirror whose radius of curvature is twice the focal length of the lens we
wish to simulate. The fact that the lens is used in transmission and a mirror
in reflection is not relevant in OSCAR. Indeed the evolution of the laser beam
confined between two mirrors can always be simulated by the propagation of
a laser beam passing through a periodic system of lenses[4].
1.3.4 Aperture
Apertures can be represented by two complementary physical areas: one area
transmits integrally the light falling on it whereas the other area blocks inte-
grally the light. Apertures are useful to simulate correctly finite size optics.
In OSCAR, the optical path difference representing a mirror is defined over
the whole calculation grid independently of the real size of the mirror. To
simulate a finite size mirror, we multiply the reflected field by an aperture
which has the same diameter as that of the mirror. The aperture simulates
the fact that any light falling outside the mirror is lost.
Practically, an aperture A(x, y) is represented by matrix of 0 and 1. A

0 at the position (x, y) indicates that the light is blocked and a 1 indicates
that the light is transmitted. An example of a circular aperture is presented
in figure 1.5. Thus, to simulate the reflection from a finite size mirror, we can
include the aperture effect in the previous equation 1.16:
Eo (x, y) = Ei (x, y) exp (−jk∆OP L(x, y))A(x, y) (1.19)

As for the optical path difference induced by the mirror, we can also define
a matrix representing the aperture. In the OSCAR code this matrix is called
M irror.mask. This matrix is only filled with 0 and 1, 1 when the pixel is in-
side the mirror and 0 otherwise. The simple Matlab code to create a circular
aperture in OSCAR is described in the listing 1.4.
Listing 1.4: The code used to create a circular aperture
% Define aperture diameter in meters

Aperture diameter = 0.1;
Mirror.mask = zeros(Grid.Num point,Grid.Num point,’double’);

Radius = sqrt(Grid.axis(m)ˆ2+Grid.axis(n)ˆ2);
if (Radius < Aperture diameter/2)
Mirror.mask(m,n) = 1;
end
end
end
Figure 1.5: Plot of the 2D matrix representing a circular aperture of diameter

10 cm. The number of points for the grid is 32 × 32 points and the physical
size of the grid is 16 cm × 16 cm.
1.3.5 Code implementation

To simulate the reflection of an electric field by a mirror (or a transmission
through a lens), we define a function called Propa mirror. The function takes
as parameters the input electric field, the optical path difference induced by
the mirror and the reflectivity of the mirror as shown in the listing 1.5 . The
output of the function is the electric field after the reflection on the mirror.
The function is a direct implementation of the equation 1.16.
The aperture of the mirror is also included in the reflection ; however it
is not an argument of the function Propa mirror since we suppose that the
mirrors have all the same diameter, so the aperture matrix is constant6 . In the
function, the reflectivity of the mirror is scalar, which means the reflectivity
is homogeneous and constant over the mirror surface. The reflectivity of the
6
The function can easily be modified if the mirrors have different sizes.
mirror can also be defined as a matrix if the reflective coating is not perfectly
uniform.
Listing 1.5: The function used to simulate the reflection of an electric field by
a mirror
function Output = Propa mirror(Wave field, Wave mirror, reflectivity)
global Mirror;
global Laser;
Output = Wave field .* exp(i * Wave mirror*Laser.k prop) * reflectivity .* Mirror.mask;
1.4 Simulating a Fabry-Perot cavity

Since we have seen in the two last sections how to propagate a laser beam in
free space (section 1.2) and how to simulate the reflection by a mirror (section
1.3), we have everything we need to simulate a Fabry-Perot cavity.
A Fabry-Perot cavity is usually constituted by two mirrors facing each
other. Between these two mirrors, a light field is circulating, bouncing back
and forth between the two reflective coatings. One of the main interests of
the Fabry-Perot is that the optical power of the circulating field can be much
higher than the power of the input field. With OSCAR, it is possible for a
given input field to calculate the total circulating power, reflected power and
transmitted power as well as the spatial profile of all the light fields.
The method used by OSCAR to calculate the circulating field in a Fabry-

Perot cavity is well known for most readers. Indeed, the same method is often
used in undergraduate lectures to calculate analytically the circulating field
in the cavity[5]. OSCAR calculates the circulating field by propagating back
and forth the laser beam between the two mirrors and then summing all the
fields at one particular plane as shown in figure 1.6.
In more details, we can write the OSCAR algorithm used to compute
the circulating power. Using the notation from the figure 1.6 the different
consecutive steps can be described as:
1. Define the cavity parameters as well as the mirror profiles and the input
beam.
1.4. SIMULATING A FABRY-PEROT CAVITY 19
Figure 1.6: Description of the algorithm used in OSCAR to calculate the

circulating field in a Fabry-Perot cavity. The violet arrows represent a phase
change for the light field which is described by equation 1.16 and the green
arrows represent the propagation of the light field using a FFT code. From
Ei to Ei+1 , the light field has undergone one round-trip in the cavity. IM and
EM stand respectively for Input Mirror and End Mirror.
2. Propagate the input beam Ein through the input mirror . For this
purpose the input mirror can be assimilated to a lens, so the listing 1.5
can be used. As a result, we obtain the field E1 .
3. After one round-trip in the cavity, the field E1 becomes E2 . One round-
trip in the cavity consists specifically of one propagation through the
cavity length using the FFT code, one reflection on the end mirror,
another propagation back to the input mirror and then finally a reflection
on the input mirror.
4. Repeat the last operation to create the set of electric field Ei .
5. Then sum all the field Ei to have the cavity circulating power Ecirc .
The number of light field Ei to be considered to have an accurate result
depends on the finesse of the cavity.
6. The transmitted field Eout is simply the circulating field transmitted

through the ETM.
In the above pseudo-code, we did not mention any resonance condition to

maximize the circulating power in the cavity. Practically, we should always
define the round-trip phase shift for the field in the cavity (or a microscopic
position shift for the cavity length) before calculating the cavity circulating
power. The round-trip phase shift allows us to set the cavity to be resonant for
the fundamental mode or any other optical modes if necessary. The procedure
to find the suitable resonance length is detailed in the next chapter in section
2.3.
1.5 Further reading

In this chapter, only a general and simplistic view of the FFT code has been
presented. To have a better understanding of the power and limits of the code
some further reading is highly recommended. Here some suggestions:
The thesis from Brett Bochner[6], who programmed one of the first
FFT code used by LIGO is a mine of treasures. The chapter two of this
thesis about the technical realization of an optical FFT code contains
some essential issues to grasp for a successful code, for example how the
radius of curvature of the mirror can set an upper limit on the resolution
of the grid, the use of aliasing filters or methods to calculate the steady
state fields.
Andrew Trigdell wrote also a FFT code in the ANU group. His master
thesis may be hard to find but a following article[7] gives some good
insights of the procedures involved in the code.
A wonderful article to understand how to create a simple and robust FFT

code to simulate high finesse cavity has been written by Partha Saha.
The explanation on how to calculate the steady state cavity circulating
field is crystal clear and very elegant (however the end of the article may
appear a little bit more obscure at the first reading).
Techniques to build a FFT code (and some other optical numerical

codes) can be found in the recent thesis of Juri Agresti[8]. This thesis
is also an excellent example of how to deal with non spherical mirrors.
One of the first articles describing how to use a FFT to calculate the
eigenmodes of a cavity by Gordon and Li[9]. Although the article is 40
years old, all the modern FFT programs are still based on the funda-
mental method explained in this paper.
Part I
OSCAR V1: the classic

version
21
Chapter 2
The OSCAR code in details
This chapter is a step by step guide to run OSCAR prior to version 3. Us-
ing the simple example of a Fabry-Perot cavity, we will describe the essential
procedures and give some hints in order to obtain valid results. The different
scripts for this example can be found in the folder entitled Calculate Pcirc.
To run the full simulation, execute the Matlab script called Run OSCAR.m.
To be able to run all the examples quoted in this chapter, an older version
of OSCAR must be used: the version 1. However, this chapter is still there
for legacy reason since all the principles described here are the basis for the
current version 3. For completeness and to follow rigorously the examples,
OSCAR V1.3 could be downloaded here [10].
2.1 The cavity to simulate

We are interested in simulating a Fabry-Perot cavity with a slightly mis-
matched input beam. The physical parameters of the optical system to sim-
ulate are summarized in table 2.1. After defining our cavity, we have to
choose 2 essential parameters for our simulation: the physical size of the grid
Grid.Length and the number of points of the grid Grid.Num point. Our grid
must include the mirror aperture, so the size of the grid must be at least
equal to the mirror diameter. In our case the mirrors have a diameter of
25 cm, so the dimension of the grid could be 30 cm × 30 cm. Then, we can
think about the number points required to sample the laser beam. Of course,
a large number of points leads to accurate results but at the price of a lengthy
computational time. From experience a grid with 128 × 128 is a safe choice
to simulate a cavity with smooth mirrors.
23
24 CHAPTER 2. THE OSCAR CODE IN DETAILS
Table 2.1: Parameters of the input beam and the Fabry-Perot cavity we wish
to simulate. The variable name is the name of the variable in the OSCAR
program and so also in the Matlab workspace.
Parameters Variable name Value
Cavity length (m) Length cav 1000
Substrate refractive index Refrac index 1.5
Mirror diameter (mm) Mirror.Diam 250
Input laser
Wavelength (nm) Laser.lambda 1064
Beam radius (mm) Laser.size 20
Wavefront curvature (m) Laser.radius -2000
Optical power (W) Laser.power 1
Input mirror
Radius of curvature (m) ITM.RofC 2500
Transmission ITM.T 0.005
Loss (ppm) ITM.L 50
Reflectivity ITM.R 1 - (Transmission + Loss)
End mirror
Radius of curvature (m) ETM.RofC 2500
Transmission (ppm) ETM.T 50
Loss (ppm) ETM.L 50
Reflectivity ITM.R 1 - (Transmission + Loss)
To speed up the calculations, we suppose the substrate of the input and

end mirror to be thin, so the substrates are equivalent to thin lenses for a
beam passing through. We also suppose the laser beam to be defined at the
input mirror reflective coating but still outside the cavity, so we do not have
to propagate the input laser beam in space or in the substrate before the
transmission through the input mirror.
2.2 Declaration and initialization

The first Matlab script to run when starting a simulation is the script called
CreateField.m. During this script all the variables required for the simulation
will be defined. That includes as well the matrix representing all the mirror
maps (in reflection and transmission), mirror aperture(s) and the matrix de-
2.3. FINDING THE RESONANCE LENGTH 25
scribing the input laser beam. For coherence, all the variables must be defined
in the International System of Units (SI), which means that all the variables
representing a length are in meters.
The script CreateField.m is most of the time self-explainatory and does not
require extensive thinking. First the variables Grid.Length and Grid.Num point
are defined and then all the variables listed in the table 2.1 are given. From
the given parameters, the mirror aperture matrix is created (according to
the listing 1.4), following by the propagation matrix (listing 1.2), the mirror
∆OP L(x, y) maps (listing 1.3) and finally the matrix of the input beam.
For convenience, two matrices extensively used in intermediate calcula-
tions are also defined: Grid.D2 is a matrix where the value p of each pixel
is the distance between the pixel and the origin, i.e value = x2 + y 2 and
Grid.D2 square is the previous matrix but with every pixel squared, i.e Grid.D2 square =
Grid.D2.2
2.3 Finding the resonance length

In this section the role of one of the most important script in OSCAR is ex-
plained. This script is called Find resonance length.m and is used to find the
microscopic shift of the cavity length which is required to be on resonance.
This script is essential because before calculating the circulating field in a
Fabry-Perot cavity, the cavity has to be set on resonance where the circulat-
ing power of the fundamental mode TEM00 will be maximized. In the domain
of gravitational wave detection, all the optical cavities of the detector are res-
onant for the fundamental mode or very near the resonance as in the case of
DC-readout or detuned signal recycling.
2.3.1 Setting the resonance the length

The first thing to understand is how OSCAR implements a microscopic length
shift of the cavity length. For example, for setting the cavity on resonance
we have to shift the cavity length (called Length cav) by a value δL with δL
smaller than half a wavelength. The first (and the simplest) idea is to the set
a new cavity length to Length cav+δL. This solution is perfectly viable and
gives correct result in Matlab for kilometer long cavities. However, from a
numerical point of view it may not be the most robust solution since we have
to add a length of the order of the kilometer with a length smaller than one
micrometer1 .
Another solution to set the cavity on resonance, is to add after each light
round-trip in the cavity a constant phase shift. This is this solution that we
use in OSCAR. So to simulate a cavity length shift of δL, a phase shift of k2δl
is added after each round-trip of the field Ei . Practically, when calculating
the circulating field, the matrix of the field Ei is multiplied by a scalar factor
exp (jk2δl) just before the field is reaching back the input mirror. To be
consistent with the previous chapter it must have been exp (−jk2δl) however
in the OSCAR code, it is implemented as exp (jk2δl), the sign convention can
be arbitrary (as soon as it is kept constant for all the procedures).
In OSCAR, the variable which represents the shift in the cavity length
necessary to be on the desired resonance is called Length.reso zoom. To deter-
mine the right value for Length.reso zoom, the script Find resonance length.m
has to be run first. By convention, Length.reso zoom is in fact δl/2 which
means that the variable Length.reso zoom represents the shift in the round-
trip length to make the cavity resonant. With this convention if Length.reso zoom
is shifted by one wavelength, the resonance frequency is shifted by one free
spectral range.
2.3.2 Finding the resonance length in details

The principle to find the resonance length of the cavity is quite simple: the
cavity circulating power is monitored as the cavity round-trip length is scanned
over one wavelength. The resonance length Length.reso zoom is the length
which maximizes the circulating power. A typical plot of the circulating power
as a function of the microscopic cavity round-trip length is shown in figure
2.1.
The first idea to draw a plot of the cavity circulating power as a function of
the cavity tuning is straightforward. We simply run the FFT code to calculate
the circulating power for all the different de-tuning we would like to test. For
example, in figure 2.1, the horizontal axis which spans over one wavelength is
divided into 2000 points. So we can imagine to run the FFT code, 2000 times
for each particular round-trip length. This procedure is absolutely correct,
however extremely slow.
Practically, in OSCAR to draw the plot in figure 2.1, a technique first
described by Gordon and Li[9] is employed. The principle is explained in the
following steps :
1
For reference, in Matlab the relative accuracy in the number representation can deter-
mined with the function eps(’double’), on my computer it is of the order 10−16 .
Figure 2.1: Circulating power in the cavity as the function of the macroscopic
round-trip length de-tuning, scanned over one wavelength. The highest peak
indicates the resonance position of the fundamental mode TEM00 . We can
also notice two smaller peak revealing the presence of higher order optical
modes ; this is a strong proof that the input beam is not matched with the
cavity eigenmode. The figure has been plotted for two values of Length.nb iter,
this variable determines the number of fields Ei to include in the sum when
calculating the circulating power. On resonance, the build up circulating
power is of course higher when we use 1600 fields instead of 800 (even if it is
not obvious in the figure due to the large vertical scale).
1. First all the fields Ei are calculated and stored for an arbitrary position
of the cavity tuning (so for an arbitrary resonance length). This step is
only done once.
2. The circulating field Ecirc for a particular microscopic round-trip length

δl is built up by summing all the field Ei with the proper phase shift:
X
Ecirc = Ei exp (jkδl) (2.1)
i
3. Repeat the previous step over all the de-tuning length δl we wish to try.
The advantage of this technique is that the FFT code is just called once
to calculate the field Ei , then the reconstruction of the power buildup for the
various length de-tunings is just a matter of sums and multiplications. The

only limitation of this technique is that a huge amount of memory is required
since all the fields Ei are to be stored. For example, if we want to store 500
complex matrices of 256 × 256 points, 500 megabytes of free memory are
required.
2.3.3 Code implementation

To calculate the resonance length in OSCAR, ie the value of Length.reso zoom,
several script are involved. Here the list:
Find resonance length.m is the main procedure. At the end of the pro-
cedure, the variable Length.reso zoom which maximizes the cavity cir-
culating power, is returned. This script is divided into two similar parts:
the cavity de-tuning is first scanned over one wavelength, then we scan
around the maximum position (found after the first scan) with a much
greater de-tuning resolution (we zoom around the maxima found in the
first part). At the beginning of the script, two important variables are
defined: Length.nb iter determines the number of steps used to scan the
cavity over one wavelength (usually 2000) and Length.nb propa field is
the number of light round-trip taken into account when calculating the
circulating power (i.e. number of fields Ei we used).
Propagate Field.m is a script called at the beginning of Find resonance length.m.

This script calculates all the intermediate field Ei using the FFT code
and stores the results in one variable called Field.propa. Field.propa is a
3D matrix having with a size of Grid.Num point × Grid.Num point ×
Length.nb propa field.
Build Field Cavity.m is a function called intensively by Find resonance length.m.

This function takes for argument a length de-tuning and returns the
build-up circulating field following the equation 2.1.
Calculate power.m is a simple function which takes for input a 2D elec-

tric field and returns the optical power in Watt of the input field.
2.3.4 Some comments

The method used by OSCAR to find the resonance length is slow. In terms
of calculation time, it is the bottleneck of this FFT code. It is possible to
find different approaches to calculate the resonance length and some are much
faster, however I prefer to keep the method described above. Why ? Because
the plot of the circulating power as a function of the wavelength (figure 2.1)
contains much essential information which help debugging the simulation or
understanding the optical system. Here are some examples :
If during a simulation, the plot of the circulating power as a function of

the de-tuning does not look like the one in figure 2.1, but instead looks
flat or with very small bumps it means the cavity is unstable. In the
same idea, the line-width of the peak in the plot is inversely proportional
to the finesse of the cavity, so gives a good indication of the round-trip
loss in the cavity.
The number of peaks in the plot is directly proportional to the mode-

mismatching or misalignment between the input beam and the cavity
eigenmodes. In the case of perfect mode-matching only one peak is
present, which means that all the input light is coupled to only one op-
tical mode (preferably the fundamental Gaussian beam). By looking at
the shape of the higher order modes that are excited (see figure 2.1), we
could have an idea of the type of mode-mismatching and/or misalign-
ment. For example, if all the higher order modes that are excited look
like TEMm0 , it means the input beam is misaligned with the cavity axis
in the horizontal direction.
Finally, since we also know the position de-tuning for the higher order
modes, we can also set the cavity on the resonance of the higher order
modes if necessary. The knowledge of the relative de-tuning position
of the resonance for the higher order modes allows also the calculation
of the Gouy phase shift between higher order modes (which maybe un-
known if the beam is not Gaussian).
We do not need many of light round-trip to have an accurate result for

the resonance length position. In the previous example, we use 800 or 1600
round-trips for the calculation but only 50 round-trips can already give a cor-
rect answer. The only difference is that the plot of the circulating power as a
function of the de-tuning may not look so sharp (so we can miss the presence
of smaller resonance peaks).
For verification purpose, it may be important to check the shape of the

circulating field for different de-tuning lengths. For example to display the
circulating field for a de-tuning position of 2.5 × 10−7 , which corresponds to
Figure 2.2: 2D amplitude of the circulating field responsible for the 3 peaks
in the plot of the cavity circulating as a function of the de-tuning (figure
2.1). We can recognize from left to right the mode LG10 , LG20 and finally
the fundamental mode LG00 . The presence of the 3 first LGm0 optical modes
indicates that the input beam is properly aligned with the cavity axis but that
we have a slight mode-mismatching.
the first left peak in the figure 2.1, we just have to write the following command
in Matlab:
>> Plot Field(Build Field Cavity(2.5E-7))
With such a command, we can check which optical modes can build up in the
cavity. The 2D amplitude of the three optical modes corresponding to the
three peaks in figure 2.1 are presented in figure 2.2 in the order of increasing
de-tuning.
2.4 Calculating the circulating field

The previous procedure Find resonance length.m is essential to determine the
operating point for the cavity. In most cases the cavity is locked on the fun-
damental mode TEM00 , so the procedure Find resonance length.m returns by
default the value of the de-tuning required to make the TEM00 resonant in-
side the cavity. It is always implicitly assumed that the maximum circulating
power is obtained for a resonant TEM00 and not for a higher order optical
mode.
After we have calculated the resonance length, the script Get results.m
can be called. This script calculates the static fields in the Fabry-Perot cavity
2.4. CALCULATING THE CIRCULATING FIELD 31
and displayed the total circulating power as well as other results.
The procedure to calculate the circulating field was explained in the section
1.4 and is briefly reminded here. First the input laser field (variable Field.Start
in OSCAR) crosses the input test mass substrate, creating the intermediate
circulating field (variable Field.Circ and also called E1 in figure 1.6). Then the
intermediate circulating field is propagated back and forth between the cavity
mirrors with the number of round-trips determined by the variable Iter.final.
The total circulating field (variable Field.Total ) is derived by summing all the
intermediate fields at a defined position in the cavity, in OSCAR it is done
after the reflection from the input mirror. Everything described above can be
simply achieved in Matlab as shown in the listing 2.1.
Listing 2.1: The core of the OSCAR program to calculate the circulating field
in a cavity
Length.reso zoom = 8.7794200e−007;

Iter . final = 3000;
Phase shift = exp(i*Laser.k prop* Length.reso zoom);
Field .Circ = Propa mirror(Field.Start, Mirror.ITM trans,i*ITM.t);
for q = 1:Iter . final
Field .Total = Field.Total + Field.Circ;
Field .Circ = Make propagation(Field.Circ,Mat propagation);

Field .Circ = Propa mirror(Field.Circ,Mirror.ITM cav,ETM.r);
Field .Circ = Make propagation(Field.Circ,Mat propagation);
Field .Circ = Field.Circ * Phase shift ;
Field .Circ = Propa mirror(Field.Circ, Mirror.ITM cav,ITM.r);
end
After the calculation of the total circulating field in the cavity Field.Total,
the transmitted beam Field.Transmit and the reflected beam Field.Reflect can
be easily derived. The transmitted beam is simply the total circulating field
after a transmission through the end mirror. The reflected beam is the sum of
the input field directly reflected by the input mirror and the field leaking from
the cavity (which is the total circulating field transmitted by the input mirror).
2.5 Displaying the results

After the total circulating, transmitted and reflected fields have been cal-
culated, the results can be displayed. First some parameters (with obvious
names) are written in the Matlab command window, then a 2D plot of the
different optical fields present is displayed as shown in figure 2.3.
------ Display the results ------

Circulating power (W): 749.256602
Reflected power (W): 0.885891
Transmitted power (W): 0.037463
Beam radius on the ITM (m): 0.020574
Beam radius on the ETM (m): 0.020577
Cavity waist size (m): 0.016462
Location of the waist from ITM (m): -499.853070
To feel confident in the results from OSCAR, it is always good to test the
results with different choices of number of light round-trip or size of the grid.
If the results are very sensitive to one parameters, it usually means that there
is a problem somewhere, and further checks are required.
For example, the results as a function of number of light round-trip are
presented in the table 2.2. As expected, on resonance, the circulating power
(defined by the power of the sum of all the fields Ei ) increases when the num-
ber of field Ei computed increases. The right number of iterations to consider
for a simulation depends on the finesse of the cavity. For a low finesse cavity,
with a high round-trip loss, the power contained in the field Ei will quickly
decrease and rapidly becomes negligible after few round-trips. In table 2.2,
the FFT results are compared with the results from the software Finesse [11],
which is based on mode expansion. The Finesse script used to simulate the
Fabry-Perot cavity is presented in appendix B.
Another important parameter to test is the resolution of the grid. The

results for different sizes of the grid are presented in the table 2.3. As we can
see, the results are pretty robust even with a coarse grid. For a grid size of
32 × 32, the grid resolution is 1 cm, which means the beam radius is just
represented by 2 pixels in the cavity. Even with such a low resolution, the
results are still accurate.
2.5. DISPLAYING THE RESULTS 33
Figure 2.3: Amplitude profile of the different steady state optical fields in
the Fabry-Perot cavity.
Table 2.2: Influence of the total number of light round-trip considered (vari-
able Iter.final ) on the results. The size of the grid is set to 128 × 128.
Number of Circulating Cavity waist Cavity waist
iteration power (W) size (mm) position from IM (m)
1000 640.712 18.403 -499.835
2500 747.546 18.403 -499.852
5000 749.903 18.403 -499.853
10000 749.906 18.403 -499.835
Finesse 749.906 18.403 -500
Table 2.3: Influence of the size of the grid (variable Grid.Num point) on the
results. The number of iteration is 5000. The computation time is normalized
by the computation time required for a grid of size 128 × 128 (which is less
than 2 minutes on a modern computer).
Size of Circulating Cavity waist Cavity waist Normalized
the grid power (W) size (mm) position from IM (m) computation time
32 × 32 749.902 18.403 -499.854 0.09
64 × 64 749.903 18.403 -499.853 0.31
128 × 128 749.903 18.403 -499.853 1.00
256 × 256 749.902 18.403 -499.844 7.32
Finesse 749.906 18.403 -500 -
2.6 Calculating the cavity eigenmodes and

diffraction loss
We can first wonder what is called a cavity eigenmode ? A cavity eigenmode
is an electric field which comes back exactly with the same spatial profile after
one cavity round-trip. The spatial profile must be identical but not necessary
the amplitude since the cavity may be lossy. The usual cavity eigenmodes
are the set of Hermite-Gauss and Laguerre-Gauss for cavity with spherical
mirrors, as most of the readers must already know.
For high finesse cavities2 , the circulating field is in fact a cavity eigenmode.
This can be easily understood if the input cavity field is negligible compared
to the cavity circulating field, a more rigorous demonstration can be found
in [12] for example. Mode cleaner cavities are based on this principle, the
transmitted beam is the TEM00 cavity eigenmode, whereas the input beam
may be composed of several optical modes.
Usually, we seldom need a FFT code to calculate the eigenmodes of a
Fabry-Perot cavity with spherical mirrors since the exact analytical solutions
are known [13]. However, we may want to know the cavity eigenmodes if the
mirrors are not perfectly spherical (because of thermal lensing) or if beam
clipping due to finite-size mirrors is important. To know the cavity eigen-
modes in this case, we defined an input beam close in shape to the supposed
cavity eigenmodes and then calculate the cavity circulating field. The cavity
circulating field will be the cavity eigenmode. Some problems may arise if
2
Quantitatively (and approximately), we could say that a cavity has a high finesse when
the the circulating power is much higher than the input power
2.7. A TYPICAL OSCAR RUN 35
the cavity is nearly degenerate and the input beam is composed of several
resonant or near resonant modes. In this case we can think of two solutions :
1. Increase the cavity finesse to have a better separation between optical

modes and if necessary generate some specific losses to attenuate the
undesirable optical modes.
2. Take the cavity circulating field as a new input field and start a new
calculation. This step can be done several times and could be understood
as cascading optical cavities to increase the mode-cleaning effect.
Since we have now an idea of how to calculate a cavity eigenmode, we can

also try to calculate the diffraction loss for this mode. We call here ”diffraction
loss” the loss due to the finite size of the mirrors. This loss is also sometime
referred as ”clipping loss”. Since in theory, Gaussian beams have an infinite
spatial extent, diffraction losses are always present. However the loss can be-
come negligible for large diameter mirrors and small laser beam radius. For
example, the diffraction loss of a laser beam of beam radius 6 cm after reflec-
tion on a 15 cm radius mirror is only 4 ppm [14]. The diffraction losses are
more important for higher order optical modes and ultimately can even affect
the profile of the mode [15].
In OSCAR the diffraction loss of an eigenmode is computed by calculating

the round-trip loss of the mode when the reflectivities of the cavity mirrors are
set to 1. So the first step is to calculate the cavity eigenmode, this is usually
done by calculating the circulating field in a high finesse cavity. The second
step is to normalize the power of the eigenmode to 1 and then propagate the
mode one round-trip in the cavity whose mirrors reflectivities are set to 1.
Finally, the diffraction loss is simply the power lost by the mode during one
round-trip. The above steps are shown in the listing 2.2.
An example of how to calculate diffraction loss with OSCAR can be found
in the folder called Calculate diffraction loss. This example is detailed in the
chapter 3.2 of this manual.
2.7 A typical OSCAR run

A typical run of OSCAR consists of running consecutively three different Mat-
lab scripts:
1. CreateField.m is the script used to initialize the variables and define the
optical cavity parameters, the mirror maps as well as the input beam.
Listing 2.2: Piece of code used to calculate the diffraction loss. We suppose
that we have already calculated the circulating field Field.Total.
% Normalise the circulating field (=the eigenmode)
Field . loss = Field.Total;
Field . loss = Field. loss /sqrt(Calculate power(Field. loss ));
% Make a round−trip with a reflectivity of 1 for the mirrors

Field . loss = Make propagation(Field.loss,Mat propagation);
Field . loss = Propa mirror(Field.loss,Mirror.ETM cav,1);
Field . loss = Make propagation(Field.loss,Mat propagation);
Field . loss = Propa mirror(Field.loss, Mirror.ITM cav,1);
% Calculate the diffraction loss

Dif loss = (1 − Calculate power(Field.loss ));
fprintf ( ’ Diffraction loss per round−trip: %d \n’,Dif loss);
2. Find resonance length.m is used to find automatically the resonance

length of the cavity which maximizes the circulating power. In most
cases, the resonance length locks the cavity on the TEM00 . Manually it
is possible to lock the cavity on any arbitrary position, for example to
see the resonance of one higher order mode.
3. Get results.m is the main procedure which gets the circulating field in
the cavity and, if required, also the reflected and transmitted fields as
well as the diffraction loss of the circulating field.
The calls for the three previous script are usually reunited into one single
scrip called Run OSCAR.m.
2.8 Script and function list

Here is the list of Matlab scripts that you may find in every OSCAR folder.
Depending on the goal of the simulation, the scripts may not be exactly the
same and some variations exist.
Beam parameter.m is a function which takes for parameter a complex

2D Gaussian field and returns the beam radius and the wavefront radius
of curvature. The fit only works for fundamental Gaussian beam but it
can easily be adapted to also fit higher order modes.
Build Field Cavity.m is a function used to find the resonance length, see
section 2.3.3.
2.8. SCRIPT AND FUNCTION LIST 37
Calculate power.m is a simple function which takes a 2D field and re-

turns the optical power of the field.
CreateField.m is the first script called in OSCAR to initialize all the

variables, see section 2.2.
CreateMirror.m is the script to create the matrix representing the wave-

front distortion induced by the mirrors, see section 1.3.2.
Find resonance length.m is used to find the microscopic de-tuning re-

quired to set the cavity on resonance, see section 2.3.2.
Get results.m is the main OSCAR procedure to calculate the circulating

power in the cavity. The script is also used to do some post processing
of the results, see section 2.4 and 2.5.
Make propagation.m propagates a 2D field over a certain distance. The

function takes two arguments (a field and a propagation matrix) and
returns the field after propagation. The function is the implementation
of the last three lines in listing 1.2.
Plot Field.m is a function which takes a 2D field and plots the amplitude
of the field in 2D (or 3D if desired).
Propa mirror.m is a function to simulate the effect of a wavefront distor-

tion. The function takes a 2D input field, a mirror map or any distortion
and a reflectivity (or transmittivity) and returns the field after reflection
(or transmission). The function is described in section 1.3.5.
Propagate Field.m creates the initial 3D matrix used to calculate the

circulating field for the different de-tuning, see section 2.3.3 for further
explanations.
Chapter 3
Applications
In this chapter, we provide examples of some typical results that can be ob-
tained with OSCAR. These examples could be taken as a starting point to
build more complex simulations. The OSCAR scripts associated with each ex-
ample are provided in the OSCAR package. The example described here are
using the classic version of OSCAR (version 1.X) which can be downloaded
here [10]. For new users, it is recommended to use OSCAR V3.x and
so jump directly to the section 5
3.1 Distortion of the optical field due to thermal

lensing
Let us consider the same Fabry-Perot cavity as the one described in the pre-
vious chapter (section 2.1). Instead of using an input laser beam of 1 W, we
upgrade the input power to 500 W (so the circulating power is now 375 kW)
and we are interested in simulating some thermal lensing. Both input and end
mirrors are supposed to be made of fused silica with a substrate absorption
of 2 ppm/cm and a coating absorption of 0.5 ppm.
At least two distinctive effects can be induced due to the optical power
absorbed in the mirrors:
A temperature gradient inside the substrates of the mirrors appears. The
temperature gradient generates a refractive index gradient (thermo-optic
effect) which induces a wavefront distortion for the beam crossing the
optics.
Since the temperature is no longer uniform in the test mass, the curva-
ture of the optic surface will change as a result of thermal expansion. In
39
40 CHAPTER 3. APPLICATIONS
this case we can expect the eigenmode of the cavity to change as well.
Before we continue, it is better to make some assumptions to lighten

the calculations. If the reader understands the method described here it is
straightforward to implement a full model. First we will suppose that we
have uniform absorption in the test mass, so we can take advantage of the
cylindrical symmetry. The power absorbed is dominated by the coating ab-
sorption, so we will only take into account the temperature gradient T (r, z) in
the optics and the thermal expansion of the mirror high reflective (HR) coat-
ing surface δs(r). The deformations of the anti reflective coating are assumed
to be negligible.
OSCAR cannot simulate directly the effect of the optical absorption. If
required an analytical formula can be implemented [16] however it is not as
flexible as finite-element simulations in particular if thermal lensing compensa-
tion schemes have to be investigated. I used the software ANSYS to simulate
the temperature gradient T (r, z) in the optics and the thermal expansion of
the mirror surface δs(r)1 . A schematic of the hot cavity is shown in figure 3.1.
From the temperature distribution inside the substrate and the sagitta
change, we can derive the optical path length difference ∆OP Nsub trans (r) in-
duced by the substrate in transmission according to:
Z L Z L
trans
∆OP Nsub (r) = n(r, z)dz − n(0, z)dz + (n − 1)δs(r)
0 0
Z L Z L
= βT (r, z)dz − βT (0, z) + (n − 1)δs(r)dz(3.1)
0 0
With β the thermo-optic coefficient and n the refractive index of the sub-
ref
strate. Similarly, we can calculate the wavefront distortion ∆OP Nsub (r) for
the input beam reflected directly reflected on the input mirror:
Z L Z L
ref
∆OP Nsub (r) =2 βT (r, z)dz − βT (0, z) + nδs(r) (3.2)
0 0
And finally, the wavefront distortion of the beam reflected on the mirrors
inside the cavity is:
ref
∆OP Ncav (r) = 2δs(r) (3.3)
1
We assume uniform absorption in the test mass, so we can take advantage of the
cylindrical symmetry.
3.1. DISTORTION OF THE OPTICAL FIELD DUE TO THERMAL
LENSING 41
Figure 3.1: Schematics of the hot cavity. The mirror diameter is 250 mm
and the thickness is 100 mm. We can notice that the temperature profile is
dominated by the coating absorption. The optical parameters are detailed in
the text. For clarity, we did not represent the curvature of the cold optics
and we suppose the same distortion in the input and end mirrors. T (r, z)
represents the temperature distribution inside the test mass and δs(r) the
change in sagitta due to the optical absorption.
Of course, the three wavefront distortions just defined have to be added

to any wavefront distortion already present when the cavity is cold, especially
the ones induced by the curvature of the mirrors. For references, the main
distortions due to thermal lensing which have to be included in OSCAR are
plotted in figure 3.2.
Here an example how to proceed in reality. First run ANSYS to simulate

the temperature distribution in the test mass as well as the thermal expansion
of the optic. Then from these results, we can save a text file with two results,
first the wavefront distortion induced by the thermo-optic effect for the optic
in transmission and the change in sagitta of the optics. The text file is then
loaded in OSCAR and the new wavefront distortions for the all optics of the
cavity are calculated accordingly. An example of such a text file is presented
below, the first column is the radius, the second the optical path length dif-
ference in transmission and the third the change in sagitta, all the columns
are in meters.
-1.2500000e-001 -1.0824598e-006 -2.6695000e-008

Figure 3.2: Optical path length difference induced by the mirror substrates
in transmission when only the thermo optics effect is considered (left) and
change in the sagitta of the reflective side of the mirrors (right). It interesting
to note the difference between the two vertical scales, the left plot represents
an optical path in micrometers, whereas the right plot is in tens of nanometers.
These plots are derived from the results of ANSYS simulations and will then
be integrated into OSCAR.
-1.2142857e-001 -1.0731224e-006 -2.6433549e-008

-1.1785714e-001 -1.0655394e-006 -2.6172131e-008
-1.1428571e-001 -1.0577238e-006 -2.5911061e-008
-1.1071429e-001 -1.0496365e-006 -2.5695000e-008
-1.0714286e-001 -1.0398661e-006 -2.5695000e-008
-1.0357143e-001 -1.0304229e-006 -2.5615955e-008
-1.0000000e-001 -1.0216618e-006 -2.5349271e-008
The file can found in the OSCAR distribution under the name From ANSYS.txt
in the folder Calculate TL effect. A graphical representation of the data file
from ANSYS is shown in figure 3.2.
Most of the time, the resolution used in the results file from ANSYS is
different from the grid resolution used in OSCAR, so we have to resample the
results using an interpolation method. How the results file is integrated into
OSCAR is presented into the listing 3.1
After implementing the distorted mirrors, we can calculate the resonance
length for the fundamental mode and then calculate the total circulating field.
This is done by running successively the scripts Find resonance length.m and
Get results.m. The comparison between the cold cavity is presented in table
3.1.
3.1. DISTORTION OF THE OPTICAL FIELD DUE TO THERMAL
LENSING 43
Listing 3.1: Commands used to read thermal lensing results from ANSYS.
% Load the results file
load( ’From ANSYS.txt’)
loaded.radius = From ANSYS(:,1);
loaded.TL = interp1(From ANSYS(:,1),From ANSYS(:,2),Grid.D2,’spline’)*0.2;
loaded.sag = interp1(From ANSYS(:,1),From ANSYS(:,3),Grid.D2,’spline’)*0;
% Add the thermal lensing distortion to the previous wavefront

% Special attention to the sign !
Mirror.ITM cav = Mirror.ITM cav − 2*loaded.sag;

Mirror.ETM cav = Mirror.ETM cav − 2*loaded.sag;
Mirror.ETM trans = Mirror.ETM trans + loaded.TL − (Refrac index−1)*loaded.sag;

Mirror.ITM trans = Mirror.ITM trans + loaded.TL − (Refrac index−1)*loaded.sag;
Mirror.ITM ref = Mirror.ITM ref + 2*loaded.TL − 2*Refrac index*loaded.sag;
Table 3.1: Comparison of the cavity gain and size of the beam on the input
mirror for a cavity with and without thermal lensing.
Cold cavity Hot cavity
Cavity gain 749.3 444.8
Beam radius on IM (mm) 20.6 20.8
Some very interesting points can be deduced by understanding the two

lines of the table 3.1:
Due to thermal lensing, the beam radius only increases by 1 %. That

indicates that the mirror profiles are only slightly affected by thermal
lensing since the cavity eigenmodes are very similar for both cases: cold
and hot cavities. This is not a surprise since the change in sagitta of the
reflective sides of the mirrors is relatively small as we have previously
seen.
The decrease in the optical gain is quite important, since the optical gain
is almost divided by a factor 2 between the cold and hot cases. It means
in the hot cavity case, we have a strong mode mismatching between
the input beam and the cavity fundamental mode. Since the latter
has almost not changed, we can deduce that the mode mismatching is
induced by the thermal lens in the substrate of the input mirror.
We have assumed a certain amount of optical power absorbed in the

mirror, it was based on the optical power circulating in the cold cavity.
But since the circulating has decreased due to the mode mismatching,
our thermal lens calculation is wrong. A simple iterative process can be
written to solve this problem and find the steady state parameters.
This simple example shows that in our fused silica mirrors, the main
thermal lensing effect is due to the thermal lens in the substrate of the
input mirror generated by the optical absorption in the high reflective
coating. The conclusion may be different for different substrates such as
sapphire or calcium fluoride.
3.2 Calculating diffraction losses

One of the most promising application of FFT optical codes is to calculate the
diffraction loss of the circulating cavity field. The method used to calculate
the diffraction loss has been explained in section 2.6. An example how to
calculate the diffraction loss of the mode HG10 is presented in the folder
Calculate diffraction loss.
The diffraction loss calculation can be decomposed into three steps:
1. Find the resonance length of the cavity for the mode HG10 . To do
this, we could inject a mode HG10 and maximize the circulating power.
This approach is however not so easy : instead we will inject a uniform
pattern of light and excite all the optical modes HGm0 . Then we will
select manually the resonance length of the mode HG10 in the spectrum
of the cavity.
2. Find the HG10 eigenmode of the cavity. The shape of this mode can be
different from the theory if the mode undergoes some serious clipping.
3. Calculate the diffraction loss as the power lost during one light round-
trip with perfectly reflective mirrors.
We decide to not inject directly a mode HG10 (right plot on figure 3.3) but
instead inject a simpler light pattern which will excite all the optical modes
along the horizontal axis. This pattern is one vertical strip with positive am-
plitude and one vertical strip with negative amplitude as shown in the left
plot figure 3.3.
3.2. CALCULATING DIFFRACTION LOSSES 45
Figure 3.3: In the left plot, is the profile of the input electric field that we inject
in the cavity to excite the HG10 shown on the right. Both optical pattern are
normalized in amplitude.
Table 3.2: Influence of the size of the grid on the diffraction loss).
Size of the grid Diffraction loss (ppm)
128 × 128 618
256 × 256 620
512 × 512 621
By using the procedure Find resonance length.m, we can calculate all the
cavity modes excited due to our particular input beam. The circulating power
as the cavity is scanned over one FSR is shown in figure 3.4. Each peak in
this plot represents the resonance of one of the cavity mode. We can display
different cavity eigenmodes for the first four highest peaks and we found that
the mode HG10 resonates for a de-tuning of 3.181 × 10−7 m.
Since we have found the resonance length for the mode HG10 , we can
now use the procedure Get results.m to calculate the diffraction loss using the
method described in section 2.6. As a result, we found the diffraction loss
equal to 618 ppm per round-trip. Important beam clipping can also change
the shape of the eigenmode of the cavity, as can be easily demonstrated using
a FFT code[15].
We can now check how the diffraction loss depends of the size of the grid.
The results are shown in 3.2. As we can see the results do not change as we
increase the size of the grid (which is a good sign). Below a grid size of 128
× 128, no realistic eigenmodes can be found in the cavity.
Figure 3.4: Cavity spectrum showing the different resonance lengths of the
optical modes. The power profile of the main optical modes is presented
above their respective resonance peaks.
3.3 Using flat beams

In this section, we will show how OSCAR can be used to calculate the fre-
quency separation between higher order modes. This is in fact an indirect
calculation of the Gouy phase shift between optical modes. To make the ex-
ample more interesting, we will not use the usual Gaussian beams but flat
beams. As a consequence of using flat beams, the mirrors of our cavity will
no longer have spherical profiles [17].
To create the mirror profiles, we will not use directly the analytical formula
which is relatively complicated, but instead we will use the wavefront curvature
of the flat beam at the mirror position. Since the flat beam is an eigenmode
of the cavity, the curvature of the mirrors must match the wavefront of the
incoming beam. So the three steps to calculate will be:
1. Use the simple analytical formula to define the flat beam at the waist of
the cavity. Since both mirror will have identical profile, we know that
the waist position is in the middle of the cavity.
3.3. USING FLAT BEAMS 47
Listing 3.2: Script to create the mirror profiles used to support a given light
field
%−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Create nearly concentric flat beam −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−
% Create the profile at the cavity waist
waist 0 = sqrt((Laser.lambda * Length cav) / (2*pi));

p = 3*waist 0; % Defined the width of the Mesa beam
x temp = Grid.D2/waist 0;
Field .mesa tmp = (1./x temp).*exp(−x temp.ˆ2).*besselj(1,2*x temp*p/waist 0);
clear ( ’x temp’)
% Propagate the beam from the waist to the mirror

Field .On mirror = Make propagation(Field.mesa tmp,Mat propagation h);
% Take the phase of the beam at the mirror and calculate the equivalent
% change in sagitta
Mirror.ETM cav = (2/Laser.k prop)*angle(Field.On mirror);
Mirror.ITM cav = Mirror.ETM cav;
2. Propagate the beam along half the cavity length, so that the flat beam
is now at the mirror position.
3. Calculate the wavefront curvature of the beam at the mirror and then
set the mirror profile to be identical to the wavefront.
The method described in the three points above can be directly imple-
mented in OSCAR as shown in the listing 3.2.
Since we are just interested in the frequency difference between 2 eigen-
modes of the cavity (and not in the cavity circulating power), the input laser
beam only needs to be slightly matched to the cavity eigenmodes (and we
must have a high finesse to achieve a good mode selection). The important
point is that the input beam couples to (or excites) at least the two cavity
eigenmodes of interest.
As for the input light field, we decided to use a classic fundamental Gaus-
sian beam. By this way we will couple to most the cavity eigenmodes which
are circularly symmetric, e.g. the equivalent of the LGm0 modes. For example
the spectrum of the cavity as we scan over one wavelength is shown in figure
3.5. As expected we managed to excite the fundamental mode and also some
other higher order modes.
Figure 3.5: Cavity spectrum of the cavity supporting flat beams. It is impor-
tant to note the fundamental for a de-tuning of 0. This is not a coincidence,
but a direct consequence of the way we defined the mirror profiles (by propa-
gating a beam from the cavity waist).
Figure 3.6: Comparison of the profile of the fundamental flat beam with the
equivalent LG10 . Both beam contains the same optical power.
Just to have a look, we can display a cross section of the fundamental flat
beams and the equivalent LG10 to compare the energy distribution. Such a
comparison is shown in figure 3.6.
3.4. DERIVING A POUND-DREVER-HALL LOCKING SIGNAL 49
We can thus go back to our initial question : what is the frequency sep-
aration between the fundamental mesa beam and the mode LG10 ? From
the spectrum plot, we know the difference of de-tuning in length between the
fundamental mode and the equivalent LG10 is ∆l = 2.7664 × 10−7 m. Since
the displacement of one wavelength λ is equivalent to one free spectral range
(c/2L) , the frequency difference ∆f between the 2 modes is simply:
∆f = (c/2L) ∗ (∆l/λ)
= (3 × 108 /4000) ∗ (2.7664 × 10−7 /1.064 × 10−6 ) (3.4)
= 19.5kHz
Using a similar calculation, we could also deduce the Gouy phase shift
between the two cavity eigenmodes.
3.4 Deriving a Pound-Drever-Hall locking signal

In this example, we will show how to implement sidebands in OSCAR. For
testing purpose, we can try to derive the Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) error
signal which is used to lock a Fabry-Perot cavity on resonance [18]. The
error signal is derived in reflection by combining a resonant (or near resonant)
carrier field with a non resonant pair of sidebands. In this case, it can be
shown that the error signal is in fact proportional to the imaginary part of
the reflected field [19]. The script for this example can be found in the folder
Calculate PDH signals
So the first thing to do, is to create sidebands using a phase modulator.
Consider an electric field of amplitude E0 and angular frequency ω0 incoming
on a phase modulator. Em the electric field after the modulator can be written
as:
Em = E0 exp(iω0 t + m sin(ωm t))

+∞
X (3.5)
= E0 exp(iω0 t) (−1)k Jk (m) exp(ikωm t)
k=−∞
With m the modulating index and ωm the modulation frequency. Jk (m)

is the Bessel function of the first kind of order k. For example, the values for
the first Bessel functions are shown in table 3.3. As a good approximation we
can just consider the first order sidebands k = ±1. So equation 3.5 can be
simplified to:
Table 3.3: Values of the first Bessel functions for different modulating in-
dexes m. Conveniently, the Bessel functions follow the property J−k (m) =
(−1)k Jk (m)
m 0.1 0.2 0.4 Taylor series

m2
J0 (m) 0.9975 0.9900 0.9604 1− 4 + O(x4 )
m 3
J1 (m) 0.0499 0.0995 0.1960 2 + O(x )
m2 4
J2 (m) 0.0012 0.0050 0.0197 8 + O(x )
m3
5
J3 (m) 0.0000 0.0002 0.0013 48 + O(x )
m m
Em = E0 exp(iω0 t)(1 + exp(iωm t) − exp(−iωm t)) (3.6)
2 2
So the electric field after the phase modulator can be expanded as the
superposition of three electric fields of angular frequency ω0 (the carrier) and
ω0 + ωm and ω0 − ωm (respectively the upper and lower sidebands). Since each
field has different frequencies, they will also have different resonant conditions
in the cavity.
Consider the sideband with the frequency ω0 +ωm . Propagating over a dis-
tance L the sideband undergoes the phase shift exp(i ω0 +ω c
m
L). That means,
the sideband phase shift is the phase shift of the carrier plus an additional
phase shift. Since before entering the cavity, the carrier and the sidebands
have the same spatial profile, we can simulate the sidebands in the cavity by
taking the simulated carrier and by adding an extra phase shift.
In practice, to simulate the carrier and the sidebands, we can simulate

independently three optical fields, the carrier and the lower and upper side-
bands. The three fields can be treated the same way in the simulation, except
that they have different round-trip phase shifts. Below is the three phase shifts
for one round-trip in the cavity:
exp(ikLength.reso zoom) for the carrier

ω
m
exp(ikLength.reso zoom) × exp i 2Length cav for the upper sidebands
ωc
m
exp(ikLength.reso zoom) × exp −i 2Length cav for the lower sidebands
c
(3.7)
As a reminder Length cav is the length of the cavity and Length.reso zoom
is the microscopic tuning used to set the resonance condition for the carrier.
Since we know how to calculate the carrier and the sideband fields circulat-
ing in the cavity, we can also calculate the reflected fields from the cavity. The
reflected light is also the superposition of three fields, the reflected carrier, the
reflected lower sidebands and the reflected upper sidebands with respective
amplitude E0ref , E− ref
and E+ref
. The power Pdet detected by a photodiode
placed in reflection will then be :
Pdet = |E0ref + E−
ref −iωm t
e ref iωm t 2
+ E+ e |
ref 2
= |E0ref |2 + |E− ref 2
| + |E+ |
ref ∗
+ cos(ωm t)<(E0ref E− + E0ref ∗ E+
ref
) (3.8)
ref ∗
+ sin(ωm t)=(E0ref E− + E0ref ∗ E+
ref
)
ref ∗ ref −i2ωm t
+ 2<(E+ E− e )
With < and = the real and imaginary part and ∗ designates the complex
conjugate. The PDH error signal eP DH is derived by demodulating in phase
Pdet and the resulting signal is then low-pass filtered. As a result eP DH can
simply be written:
ref ∗
eP DH = =(E0ref E− + E0ref ∗ E+
ref
) (3.9)
The Matlab implementation of the method described above is straightfor-
ward. We first define three electric fields: the carrier and then the lower and
upper sidebands. Then we propagate each field in the cavity, calculate the
reflected field and then plot the error signal using the formula 3.9. To make
the result more pertinent, we fact scan the cavity over one free spectral range,
so we can see the evolution of the error signal across the resonance.
To define the sideband frequency and amplitude, we have to define new

variables (with self-explaining names) as shown in the script 3.3.
Then we can calculate the three circulating fields in the cavity called
Field.Total Field.Total sidebands plus and Field.Total sidebands minus using
the usual method introduced in section 2.4. The only difference in the algo-
rithm between the propagation of the carrier and the sidebands is the addition
of an extra phase shift per round-trip for the sidebands as shown in equation
3.7.
Listing 3.3: New variables to define the sidebands frequency and amplitude
% Frequency of the sidebands in Hertz and modulation index
Sidebands.frequency = 10E6;
Sidebands.modulation = 0.4;
% New carrier amplitude

Laser.amplitude = Laser.amplitude * besselj(0,Sidebands.modulation);
% Amplitude for one of the 2 sidebands
Sidebands.amplitude = besselj(1,Sidebands.modulation);
Ration amp = Sidebands.amplitude/Laser.amplitude;
% To add the additional phase shift undergone by the sidebands during the propagation
Sidebands.k prop = 2*pi*Sidebands.frequency/3E8;
Listing 3.4: Calculating the PDH error signals from the fields reflected by the
cavity
Field .PDH = imag(Field.Reflect carrier.*conj(Field.Reflect sidebands plus )+...
conj(Field . Reflect carrier ).* Field .Reflect sidebands minus);
% Normalised PDH signal
Power.PDH(r) = sum(sum(Field.PDH))/(Laser.amplitude*Sidebands.amplitude);
After calculating the three reflected fields from the cavity named Field.Reflect carrier
Field.Reflect sidebands plus and Field.Reflect sidebands minus, we can derive
the PDH error signal using the formula shown by equation 3.9, the equivalent
Matlab listing is shown in 3.4.
The plot of the power circulating in the cavity as a function of the mi-
croscopic de-tuning is presented in figure 3.7. The central peak is due to the
resonance of the carrier and the two smaller peaks indicates the resonance
position for the sidebands. Finally the usual PDH error signal as calculated
by OSCAR is shown in figure 3.8. Around the resonance of the carrier, we
have an error signal to lock the cavity. In theory, we have also an error signal
to lock the cavity on the sideband resonance (less useful).
Figure 3.7: Circulating power inside the cavity as the cavity is scanned over
one FSR. The two small peaks around the main resonance indicate the reso-
nance of the sidebands.
Figure 3.8: Pound-Drever-Hall error signal as a function of the de-tuning.

Figure 3.9: Optical setup of a three-mirror ring cavity. Unlike a Fabry-Perot

cavity, where the mirrors are usually perpendicular to the incident beam, for
the mode-cleaner the incoming beam arrives with a large angle on the two
bottom mirrors. The mirror notation used in the OSCAR example are also
indicated.
3.5 Simulation of a three-mirror ring cavity

We can try now to add an additional mirror to our simulations and simulate
a three mirrors ring cavity, often used as a mode-cleaner. In the previous ex-
ample we have been dealing with an optical beam perpendicular to the optical
surface, this is no longer the case as seen in figure 3.9. The fact that the inci-
dent beam arrives with an angle to the surface is the main difficultly for this
kind of simulation. However as we will see this problem can easily be overcome.
In the OSCAR mode-cleaner example (folder Simulate mode cleaner), we

suppose that the incident plane is horizontal. We keep this convention in the
manual and it is relatively easy to adapt the code for any arbitrary angle of
incidence. Let’s examine what is happening on reflection: as soon as the angle
of incidence of an electric field to a reflective surface is different from zero,
two effects can arise:
3.5. SIMULATION OF A THREE-MIRROR RING CAVITY 55
Figure 3.10: Example of an image reflected by a mirror. It is interesting to

see that after reflection the image is flipped in the horizontal direction.
The reflected beam will present astigmatism directly related to the angle
of incidence. That can be understood by imagining that the incident
beam will be stretched in the horizontal direction as it is projected to
the mirror surface upon reflection.
The beam on reflection will get flipped in the horizontal direction, this
is purely a geometrical effect and the reader can easily be convinced by
looking at the figure 3.10.
The two items described above are implemented in OSCAR in the new
function Propa mirror shown in the listing 3.5. Compared to the function
Propa mirror seen in the first chapter (section 1.3.5), we have added one
new input parameter: Grid angle X. Grid angle X is a new distorted 2D grid
representing the projection of the grid used for propagation (called Grid.D2)
to the mirror surface.
The function used to simulate the reflection on a mirror can be decomposed
in the following steps:
1. Project the incident beam on the mirror surface, so that the incident
beam will look astigmatic
2. Reflect the projected incident beam in the same way as a incoming beam
normal to the mirror surface
3. Project the reflected beam on the plane of propagation

Listing 3.5: Reflection on a mirror for arbitrary angle of incidence

% Stretch the laser beam as seen by the mirror
Output = Propa mirror(Wave field, Wave mirror, reflec,Grid angle X)
Output = interp2(Grid angle X,Grid.Y,Wave field,Grid.X,Grid.Y,’cubic’);
Output = Output .* exp(−i * Wave mirror*Laser.k prop) * reflec .* Mirror.mask;
% Go back to the normal grid

Output = interp2(Grid.X,Grid.Y,Output,Grid angle X,Grid.Y,’cubic’,0);
% Flip the matrix along the x axis

Output = Output(:,Grid.Num point:−1:1);
4. Flip the beam in the horizontal plane
The steps described above are directly implemented in Matlab as shown

in the script 3.5.
In the examples provided with OSCAR, the transmission of a three-mirror
ring cavity is presented. To show the mode-cleaning effect, the input beam
is the normalized sum of the TEM10 and TEM01 . As expected both modes
have different resonance condition inside the mode-cleaner as shown in figure
3.11. The microscopic resonance length of the two modes is separated by half
a wavelength, which is the expected result since the mode TEM10 encountered
an extra 3π shift during its round-trip propagation.
For this example, we set the working point of the cavity for the mode
TEM10 to be resonant inside the cavity. The transmitted field from the mode-
cleaner is shown at the bottom right corner of figure 3.12. As we would hope,
the transmitted field is a pure TEM10 . For consistency, we also check that
the reflected field is very similar to a pure TEM01 , but not exactly since the
input beam was not perfectly matched to the cavity.
Below is the output from OSCAR:
------ Display the results ------

Circulating power (W): 49.524735
Reflected power (W): 0.503506
Transmitted power (W): 0.495243
So the mode-cleaner was able to separate the mode TEM10 and TEM01 .
We have slightly more power reflected than transmitted by the cavity, this is
3.5. SIMULATION OF A THREE-MIRROR RING CAVITY 57
Figure 3.11: Scan of the mode-cleaner over one free spectral range. The two
main peaks are due to the resonance of the TEM01 and TEM10 . Additional
peaks in the spectrum indicates a slight mode-mismatching.
a direct consequence of the fact that the input beam is not perfectly matched
to the cavity.
---- Display results for cavity C1 -----

Round trip diffraction loss: 35.6127 [ppm]
Circulating power: 49.8224 [W]
Size of the beam on the end mirror: 0.0205821 [m]
Size of the beam on the input mirror: 0.020576 [m]
Size of the cavity waist: 0.0183982 [m]
Distance of the cavity waist from the input mirror: -500.471 [m]
-3 Input field -3 Circulating field

x 10 x 10
2 2
1.5 1.5
1 1
0.5 0.5
0 0
-0.5 -0.5
-1 -1
-1.5 -1.5
-2 -2
-2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2
-3 -3
x 10 x 10
-3 Reflected field -3 Transmitted field

x 10 x 10
2 2
1.5 1.5
1 1
0.5 0.5
0 0
-0.5 -0.5
-1 -1
-1.5 -1.5
-2 -2
-2 -1 0 1 2 -2 -1 0 1 2
-3 -3
x 10 x 10
Figure 3.12: Output screen from OSCAR. The input field, a sum of TEM10
and TEM01 is shown on the top left corner. The reflected and the transmitted
field are shown respectively in the bottom left and right picture.
Part II
OSCAR V3: the

Object-Oriented version
59
Chapter 4
The big changes
Since the version 3.0, the code has been totally rewritten using the Object-
Oriented capability of Matlab. The code is now user-friendlier and less error-
prone. Moreover, some new functions have been added and the higher order
optical modes are supported from the start.
The principle of the FFT code and the method to derive the results are
still unchanged, so for people not familiar with the inner working of FFT code,
it is strongly recommended to read the first part of this manual.
Requirements The new OSCAR works with Matlab version superior to

2009a and the Optimization Toolbox is necessary if the beam fitting functions
are used. To benefit from the GPU speed up, the Parallel Computing Toolbox
is also required.
4.1 Motivation and goals

First, the curious reader may wonder why there is no version 2.0 of OSCAR.
Such a version exists, it is OSCAR classic with the implementation of a power
recycled Michelson with Fabry-Perot arm cavities. This version was devel-
oped to simulate LIGO-Virgo-type interferometers but was never officially
distributed.
The code of version 2.0 was becoming messy since OSCAR was not in-
tended to be so advanced (remember, it was only supposed to simulate the
test cavity at Gingin in Australia). To include all the code developed for the
version 2.0, it was decided to write a full new version of OSCAR taking also
into account everything I learned as a OSCAR user.
61
62 CHAPTER 4. THE BIG CHANGES
Writing a new version allowed some radical changes: no more global vari-
ables, possible change of refractive index, sideband field managed automat-
ically at the same time as the carrier, higher order modes and much more.
In the long term, OSCAR should be able to simulate Advanced gravitational
wave detectors with realistic optics, and that in a (relatively) very simple
script.
The new code should also take into account the computing progress made
in recent years. For example, the version 3.0 has been written with parallel
processing in mind, for example the North and West arms could be computed
in parallel on different cores of the CPU (the Parallel Processing Toolbox is
then required) or a cavity scan can take advantage of multicore CPU. Since
version 3.30, calculations on the GPU are enabled.
The new code can also use separate grid sizes in the same simulation. That
could be used to simulate non-degenerate recycling cavities, where the laser
beam has to be strongly focused and could change size by a factor 10.
4.2 The new objects and how to use them

The main change of this version for the user is the implementation of Object-
Oriented programming for OSCAR. A laser field or a mirror are no longer
complex 2D matrices but are objects with different attributes. Each object is
part of a class, for example the laser beam is an instance of the class E field,
a mirror surface is an object from the class Interface. Functions are defined
to work on specific classes and not on any random 2D data.
The definition of the classes and their associated functions are presented
in the following subsections. In the description of the function call, argument
and output variables in bold are mandatory. For more detailed descriptions
of the functions and the associated syntax, the help of Matlab can be used
(type ”help” followed by the name of the function).
4.2.1 The class Grid

G1 = Grid(Nb points grid,Size grid) by default: Nb points grid = 256 and
Size grid = 1
The class Grid is used to represent the discretization of space and all the
associated variables (see C.1 for the details). It was formerly known as the
global variable Grid in OSCAR classic. One Grid object is the first object
to be defined in a OSCAR script. To define an instance of the class Grid, 2
4.2. THE NEW OBJECTS AND HOW TO USE THEM 63
parameters are necessary: the number of pixels used (typically 128 or 256)
and the size of the grid in meters. For example:
G1 = Grid(128,0.40);
Defines the object G1 of the class Grid, then later all the objects for the
simulations will be defined on a grid of 128 × 128 with a side length of 40 cm.
Only two functions are associated with the class Grid : What is possible
and Do Virtual Map.
What Is Possible(G1) returns for the grid G1 what is the approximate
maximum curvature or tilt for a mirror. By default the mirror diameter is
80% of the size of the grid and the wavelength is set to 1064 nm.
It is possible to change manually the diameter of the mirror and the wave-
length of the laser by using the optional arguments ’Diam’ and ’Wavelength’ :
What_is_possible(G1,’Diam’,0.2,’Wavelength’,633E-9)
map2D = Do Virtual Map(G, Power law)
Creates a synthetic map from a given PSD. The PSD is param-
eterized as a (or several) power law. The function return a 2D
height map of the surface which can then after be applied to a In-
terface object. See the example Example Display Create maps.m
for a practical implementation.
4.2.2 The class E field

E1 = E field( Grid name , options) by default the laser beam is in the
fundamental mode.
Instances of the class E field are laser beams, represented as electric fields
in a complex 2D matrix. The objects E field contain a wavelength (1064 nm
by default) and also the refractive index of the medium where the laser beam
is. If sidebands are present, they are also implemented in the object at the
same time as the carrier. All the variables and parameters of objects E field
are detailed in C.2.
Since OSCAR version 3.05, there are now different ways to define a laser
beam:
with the waist:

E_input = E_Field(G1,’w0’,0.02)
with the waist and a distance:

E_input = E_Field(G1,’w0’,0.02,’z’,-10)
with a beam radius and a wavefront curvature:

E_input = E_Field(G1,’w’,0.018,’R’,-1420)
with the complex q parameter:

E_input = E_Field(G1,’q’,12 + 1200*1i)
the optical mode can also be specified, for example for a helicoidal mode
LG 3 3: E_input = E_Field(G1,’w0’,0.02,’mode’,’LG_HELI 3 3’) To
define the mode basis, 3 options are possible: ’HG n m’, ’LG HELI n
m’ or ’LG SIN n m’
one can also specify the wavelength (in meters):

E_input = E_Field(G1,’w0’,0.02,’Wavelength’,532E-9)
A non distributed function also exists to create astigmatic beams. Most of

OSCAR’s functions are applied to objects of this class. The essential functions
are described below:
E2 = Add HOM(E1, max mode order)

Adds some higher order optical modes to a fundamental mode.
It is possible to choose the power distribution of the higher order
modes.
E2 = Add Sidebands(E1,’Mod freq’,mod freq,’Mod depth’,mod index)

Creates two frequency-shifted sideband fields from a carrier E Field
E1 as the phase modulator would do in the optic lab. The sepa-
ration frequency between the carrier and the sideband is given by
mod freq, and the modulation index by mod index. At present in
OSCAR, no sidebands of sidebands are allowed but an arbitrary
number of sidebands can be created, since the version 3.30.
E2 = Add Tilt(E1,angle tilt)

Tilts the wavefront of the field E1 by the angle angle tilt given in
radian. The maximum tilt allowed depends on the pixel size but
it is usually a small number (order of the milliradian or less).
overlap = Calculate Overlap(E1,E2)

Calculates the overlap integral between 2 E field. The function re-
turns the complex normalized overlap between the 2 fields. With-
out any output argument, the function returns in the command
window the power coupling (i.e. square of the absolute value of
the overlap integral) between the field E1 and E2. If only one
E field is given, it will calculate the overlap between the carrier
and of the sideband pair. The sideband number is selected with
the argument ’SB num’.
power = Calculate Power(E1,’include’,’carrier’—’all’—’SB’)

Calculates the total power of the E Field E1. The function can
either return a number or display the value in the Matlab com-
mand line if no output variable is used. With the same function,
one can also calculate the power of the sideband fields: Calcu-
late power(E1,’include’,’SB’,’SB num’,1)
E2 = Change E n(E1,n)
Changes the refractive index where the laser beam is. Could be
used to pass through a flat interface from a vacuum to a mirror
substrate for example.
return param = Check Pos Tilt(E1)

Uses as a diagnostic tool to check the centroid position of the beam
on the grid as well as its tilt, function in both directions at the
same time.
[sig p sig q] = Demodulate SB(E1,’SB num’,1,’phase’,0)

Demodulates the field E1 with the chosen pair of sidebands. By
default, the in phase sig p and in quadrature sig q signals are
returned. This function could be used to derive a Pound-Drever-
Hall error signal as shown in 5.5. Optionally, a demodulation phase
could be given.
E Plot(E1)
Displays a 2D plot of the field amplitude in a new Matlab figure
window. Function can also be used as E1.E plot(). We can also
display the amplitude in log scale E_plot(E1,’space’,’log’) or
the propagation angle of the beam E_plot(E1,’angle’). To cre-
ate illustrative picture of the beam without all the axis, one can
use the option ’no_axis’,true.
The same function could be used to display the 2 sidebands with
E Plot(E1,’display’,’SB’,’SB num’,1). The same options as for the
carrier are also possible.
Mat scattered = Expand HOM(E1,max mode order)

Expands the beam E1 into the Hermite-Gauss basis defined by E1

(E1 must be close to a fundamental mode). The result is given
as the normalized power content in the different optical modes. If
not output is asked a plot is made. Several options are possible:
output all the power content in the different higher order modes up to
the order 10
Expand_HOM(E1,10,’display’,’pyramid’)
define a different basis for the calculation given as beam radius and
complex wavefront curvature in meters
Expand_HOM(E1,10,’basis’,[0.05 -1400])
[beam radius wavefront RofC] = Fit E Field(E1)

This function is used to find the beam parameter of the field E1, it
can also be used to fit higher order modes. If no output are given
the result is written in the Matlab command window. To fit only
the fundamental mode, it is faster to use the function Fit TEM00.
For the fit of an astigmatic fundamental mode, it is recommended
to use the function Fit TEM00 xy.
[Eout,Gout] = Focus Beam With Telescope(Ein,array L D)

With this function, one can now simulate mirrors with small radius
of curvature to simulate strongly focused beam. The method has
been inspired by the work done J.Y. Vinet [20] and H. Yamamoto
[21]. This function can dynamically adapt the size of the grid and
so the focused beam could be defined on a new grid. This function
is used to simulate the focusing mode-matching telescope at the
input or output of the interferometer. The input argument is the
input field and a vector with the focal length of the equivalent
mirror/lens and the separation between the optical elements in
meters. A telescope with several lenses can be simulated with
only one call to the function. See the provided example for more
details. It has also the possibility to add maps and finite aperture
of the optics of the telescope.
E2 = Normalise E(E1,power)
Normalizes the E field E1 to 1 W if no power argument is specified.
Only the carrier is affected by this function and not the sidebands.
E2 = Propagate E(E1,dist)
Propagates the field E1 over a distance dist in meters. If sidebands

are present, the sidebands are automatically propagated at the
same time, with of course the adequate phase shift.
E2 = Reflect Mirror(E1,I1)
Returns the field after reflection on a mirror. I1 is an Interface
object which must have been previously defined. An alternative
syntax could be Reflect mirror(E1,R1), with R1 the radius of cur-
vature of the mirror to be reflected on. A concave mirror is repre-
sented by a positive R1.
Reflections inside the substrates are allowed since the index of
refraction is taken into account for the reflection.
E3 = Remove 00 Part(E1,E2)
Removes the fundamental Gaussian part from a field E1. That is
useful to see which higher order modes are superposed with the
fundamental mode following some cavities simulations. Can also
be used to subtract 2 fields E1 and E2 as in the case of destructive
interference.
E2 = Transmit Aperture(E1,size, ’circle’ | ’square’)

Transmits the field E1 through an aperture of diameter size. The
aperture could be round or square, if not specified it is round.
Custom aperture can also be defined (see the function help for
examples).
E2 = Transmit Lens(E1,focal length)

Transmits the field E1 through a lens of a given focal length.
[E trans E ref]= Transmit Reflect Interface(E1,I1)

Transmits and reflects the field E1 through an interface I1. The
orientation of the interface is given by the refractive index of the
incoming field E1.
[E trans E ref]= Transmit Reflect Mirror(E1,M1,HR/AR)

Transmits and reflects the field E1 through a mirror M1. One must
select which side of the mirror is first met for the propagation,
either we enter by the AR or HR side.
For convenience, the operators +,- and * have also been overloaded to
work with any object E field.
4.2.3 The class Prop operator

This is an internal class which must be almost invisible for the user. The
objects of this class allow to speed up the propagation of electrical field E Field
thanks to the pre-calculation of the propagation matrix. A Prop operator is
automatically created when a cavity is created. It represents the propagation
operator over one cavity length.
Since OSCAR 3.10, a new method of propagation has been implemented
based on the method of digital integration [22]. This method is slower, however
it eliminates the light leaking out from the simulation grid. With the direct
implementation, a minimal distance of propagation is essential for the validity
of this technique. The distance depends on the size of the grid and can be
checked with the function What is possible.
To enable the digital integration, one has to set the logical variable Prop operator.Use DI
to true. For example, to use the digital integration for the simulation of the
cavity C1, we will write:
C1.Propagation_mat.Use_DI = true;
The parameters included in the class Prop operator are described in C.3
The creator for this class is:

Prop = Prop operator(Grid name,Length, n)
The variable Length represents the propagation length in meters.
One can also specify in an optional parameter n the refractive index
of the media, so that thick substrate can also be implemented.
To propagate a laser beam (and its sidebands) one can simply use:
E2 = Propagate_E(E1, Prop)
4.2.4 The class Interface

I1 = Interface(Grid name,options)
The class Interface is used to represent a surface which separates two
media of different refractive index. Objects of this class are used to represent
mirrors, lenses or curved interfaces between air and glass. The structure of
the class Interface is described in C.5.
To define a concave mirror for a laser beam, the radius of curvature must
be positive. Internally in OSCAR, the sagitta of the surface viewed from the
medium n1 toward n2 will be negative by convention. The surface is stored
in the variable I1.surface.
Below are some ways to define an interface:
Interface to define a curved surface of radius 1000 m between the refrac-

tive indices 1 and 1.45
Interface(Grid,’RoC’,1E3,’n1’,1,’n2’,1.45)
Mirror with 20 cm diameter aperture

Interface(Grid,’RoC’,1E3,’CA’,0.2)
Mirror with 20 cm diameter aperture and 3 degrees angle of incidence

Interface(Grid,’RoC’,1E3,’CA’,0.2,’AoI’,3)
Add a 1% transmission and 50 ppm loss

Interface(Grid,’RoC’,1E3,’CA’,0.2.’T’,0.01,’L’,50E-6)
The optional parameters can be defined in any order. To define flat mirrors,
a ’RoC’ of 0 or Inf can be used. Check the file @Interface/Interface.m
to see the default parameters such as refractive indexes.
The list of methods associated with the objects of the class Interface is
given below:
I2 = Add Astigmatism(I1, Zernike amplitude, Diameter)
Adds to the surface of the interface I1 the Zernike polynomial 2,2
(which represents the astigmatism) with an amplitude of Zernike
amplitude and over a diameter Diameter.
I2 = Add Map(I1, filename, options)

Adds to the surface of the interface I1 a square map loaded from
the file filename. For square maps, the resolution of one pixel must
be given by the parameters ’reso’. The map can also be normal-
ized to a certain RMS using the option ’RMS’ or the height can be
scaled by scalar with the option ’scale’. One can also rotate the
map by a number of times 90 degrees with the option ’rotate’.
The option ’remove the tilt and focus’ can remove the tilt
and focus from the added map. The tilt/focus is removed over all
the surface but with the optimal fit calculated only over a diame-
ter.
Here some examples:
Load the file map1.dat

I1 = Add_map(I1,’map1.dat’,’reso’,3.5E-4)
Load the map and scale it to 1 nm RMS
I1 = Add_map(I1,’map1.dat’,’reso’,3.5E-4,’RMS’,1E-9)
Rotate the map by 90 degree

I1 = Add_map(I1,’map1.dat’,’reso’,3.5E-4,’rotate’,1)
Remove the tilt and focus
I1 = Add_map(I1,’map1.dat’,’reso’,3.5E-4,’remove_tilt_focus’,0.150)
Maps with cylindrical symmetry can be loaded as a 2-column text

files. First column is the radius and the second is the height in
meters. In that case the resolution does not have to be specified.
To suppress the output, the option ’verbose’,false can be used.
A new argument is possible to offset the map ’shift’ if the region
of interest is not at the center of the map.
I2 = Add Tilt(I1, tilt angle, ’x’)

Tilts the whole surface of the interface I1 by the amount tilt angle
in radian. It is possible to specify the direction of the tilt by setting
the third argument ’x’ or ’y’. By default the tilt is in the vertical
direction (recommended solution).
I2 = Cut Frequency Interface(I1,Option,f cut)

Removes certain spatial frequencies within a given interface object.
The argument Option is a string ’LP’, ’HP’ or ’BP’ for respec-
tively low pass, high pass or band pass filter. f cut is the corner
spatial frequency in m−1 , for band pass filtering f cut is vector of
two frequencies.
The implementation for the filtering is done in a straightforward
manner (see the simple code), so that artifacts may appear in the
resulting object I2 and that this function should be used with
caution.
I2 = Expand Zernike(I1,options)
Expands in Zernike polynomials the interface I1. Two options
are available: ’Z order’, an integer which represents the maximum
order of the Zernike polynomials to take into account in the cal-
culations and ’diam’, the diameter where the Zernike polynomi-
als are defined. This function returns the interface I2, which is
the interface reconstructed by the Zernike polynomials. Example:
I2 = Expand_Zernike(I1,’Z_order’,10,’diam’,0.2)
I Plot(I1)
Plots the surface of the interface I1. The color scale is in meters.
I_plot(I1,’diam’,0.160) will only plot the surface over a di-
ameter of 160mm. With optional arguments, one can change the
scale of the vertical axis and also zoom in the central part.
[PSD 1D freq] = Plot PSD(I1, options)

Function used to calculate the one dimension Power Spectral Den-
sity (PSD) of a surface. The two output arguments are the vector
of the PSD and the vector of the frequency. By default, before cal-
culating the PSD 2D, a Hanning window is applied to the data and
the PSD is calculated summing all the frequencies over one direc-
tion to pass from 2D to 1D. A detailed explanation of the different
ways to calculate the PSD can be found in a Hiro Yamamoto’s
LIGO note [23].
An example for the possible options can be found below, combi-
nation of the different options is allowed:
Calculate the PSD over a given diameter, given in meters

[PSD_1 freq] = Plot_PSD(I1,’diam’,0.150)
Calculate the PSD by summing radial frequencies
[PSD_1 freq] = Plot_PSD(I1,’rect_1D’,false)
Use a Gaussian weighting to calculate the PSD, must input
the Gaussian beam radius (in meters)
[PSD_1 freq] = Plot_PSD(I1,’window_Gaussian’,0.05)
Plot directly the PSD in the current window
[PSD_1 freq] = Plot_PSD(I1,’display’,true)
RMS = Weighted RMS(I1,’E’,Ein)

Calculate the RMS of the surface I1 weighted by the intensity of
the field Ein. A diameter can also be given as the second argument.
Beware that the curvature is not subtracted before the calculation,
so that a perfectly curved spherical mirror will have a non zero
RMS.
Calculate the weighted RoC

RMS = Weighted_RMS(I1,’E’,E_Field(G1,’w’,0.05))
Display directly the calculated RMS
Weighted_RMS(I1,’diam’,0.2)
RoC fitted = Weighted RoC(I1,’E’,Ein)

Calculate the radius of curvature of the surface I1 weighted by

the intensity of the field Ein. This calculation is useful to fit non
perfectly spherical surfaces. A diameter can also be given as the
second argument.
Calculate the weighted RoC

RoC = Weighted_RoC(I1,’E’,E_Field(G1,’w’,0.05))
Display directly the radius of curvature
Weighted_RoC(I1,’diam’,0.2)
The operators +,- have also been overloaded to be used with objects of
the class Interface.
4.2.5 The class Mirror

M = Mirror( I HR, I AR, Substrate length)
This class can simulate thick substrates. The substrate can be part of a
cavity as an input mirror for example. If the substrate is part of the cavity, the
surface I HR is supposed to be the HR coating (and hence inside the cavity).
I HR and I AR are 2 objects of the class Interface. The 2 interfaces must
share the same refractive index superior to 1. Substrate length is a scalar used
to represent the thickness of the substrate in meters.
The mirror object can also be used to simulate the etalon effect. Indeed if
the AR surface is imperfect (R AR > 0), light can be bounced several times
within the substrate before exiting. The number of round-trips is hard-coded
but can be changed using the line (by default it is 1):
M.RT_inside=3
Two similar procedures can be used with the class Mirror. The procedures
simulate the transmission and reflection of an E field by an instance of the
class Mirror:
[E trans E ref]= Transmit Reflect Mirror(E1,M1,’AR’)
Calculates the transmitted and reflected fields (E trans and E ref
respectively) by an object M1 of the class Mirror. The input beam
is E1. The first interface to consider, indicating the direction of
the incoming beam can be either the HR or AR surfaces according
to the last argument ’HR’ or ’AR’ .
A new wrapper function Transmit Reflect Optic has also been created
which can be used by either Interface object or Mirror object. Internally, this
function calls the function Transmit Reflect Interface or Transmit Reflect Mirror
depending on the input parameters.
4.2.6 The class Cavity1

C1 = Cavity1( I1, I2, Cavity length, E1)
This class is used to simulate Fabry Perot cavities. Objects of the class
Cavity1 are cavities constituted by two Interface objects I1, I2 separated by a
distance Cavity length. An input field E1 must also be given. I1 is considered
as the input surface where the input beam is defined, whereas I2 is the end
mirror.
The input field can be defined either inside the cavity on the surface I1 or
outside the cavity. In the later case, the input beam will first be transmitted
through I1 which can act as a lens. By default the input beam is defined
inside the cavity, if it is not the case the user can add in his script:
C1.Laser_start_on_input = false ;
Variables of instances of the class Cavity1 are listed in App3:Cavity.
Several functions are associated with the class Cavity1:
Cout = Calculate Fields(Cin)
Calculate fields calculates the fields on resonance inside the cavity
and stores them for future use. Compared to Get info this function
also calculates the reflected field, so the input laser beam cannot be
defined inside the cavity. The results can be displayed using Dis-
play results(Cout). Before finding the steady state fields inside the
cavity, the cavity working point (i.e the resonance condition) has
to be set, for example using the function Cavity resonance phase.
With the option argument ’iter’ or ’accuracy’, one can set
the level of accuracy (and hence the computational time) for the
simulation.
Cout = Calculate Fields AC(Cin)
Calculate fields AC is similar to the function Calculate fields ex-
cept that it uses the accelerated convergence scheme [12, 24] to
find the steady state fields inside the cavity. The gain in speed
could be important if the cavity is close to a perfect cavity, so the
steady field is near a perfect fundamental mode. This function
works for the carrier and for the sideband fields, if present. For
a better convergence, it is also recommended to use the digital
integration method for the propagation of the field (see 4.2.3). A
second function Calculate fields AC2 uses another more advanced
convergence scheme which can give more accurate results.
Cout = Calculate RT mat(Cin)
Calculates the round-trip kernel of the cavity for the electrical field.
This is later use to calculate the cavity eigenmodes and eigenvalues.
The kernel itself is a 2D complex matrix of size Nb points 2 ×
Nb points 2 , so the kernel can really occupy a lot of memory. On
a desktop, one might want to limit Nb points to 64, while on a
powerful desktop one can go up to 128.
To calculate the kernel, the digital integration technique has to
be used for the beam propagation. To be valid, this technique
requires a minimum propagation distance which depends on the
size of the grid. If this is a problem, the kernel can be calculated
on a different grid (contact the author for more details on this
topic).
Cout = Cavity lock PDH(Cin)

Adjusts the resonance condition to minimize the error signal de-
rived from a Pound-Drever-Hall locking scheme [19]. To calculate
the error signal a pair of sidebands must be present and the func-
tion Cavity resonance phase must first be run.
Check stability(Cin)
Calculates the radius of curvature of the input and end mirrors
and then check the stability and gain of the cavity. It is a use-
ful function when mirror maps with curvature are used. An op-
tional second argument could be given to specify the diameter
on which the mirror radius of curvature is calculated. For ex-
ample to calculate the stability of the cavity only taking into
account the central 6 cm diameter of the mirror, one can use:
Check_stability(C1,’diam’,0.06) The function also returns
the input beam parameters of the fundamental mode for a perfect
mode-matching.
Check Matching(Cin,nb RT)

Propagates the input beam back and forth between the cavity
input and end mirrors and checks the beam size before each reflec-
tion. The mode-matching is good if during multiple round-trips
the beam size on the mirror does not fluctuate (but could be differ-
ent of course on the input and end mirror). The optional argument
nb RT can set the number of round-trips to be done.
Cout = Cavity Resonance Phase(Cin)

Calculates the macroscopic length tuning to bring the cavity on

resonance for the input field. The cavity resonance has to be found
before any calculations on the cavity (circulating fields, loss cal-
culations,. . . ) are launched. The input and output arguments are
usually the same. A second function Cavity resonance phase2 is
also present, this function gives more accurate results when the
cavity is degenerate.
Cout = Cavity Scan(Cin)
Scans the cavity over one free spectral range and then sets the cav-
ity resonance to maximize the circulating power. This procedure is
much slower than Cavity Resonance Phase but can still be useful
to check if some higher order modes are excited, since afterwards
the FSR scan can be displayed. The presence of sidebands in the
input beam of the cavity can also be implemented. First the side-
bands have to be defined and then the option ’With_SB’,true
must be added in the options.
Cout = Declare on GPU(Cin)
Load all the pertinent variables regarding the cavity on the GPU.
In that way, the most intensive calculations will be done on the
GPU with some potential gain in calculation time, especially for
large grids.
The most gain in time is for the cavity FSR scans and the imple-
mentation is detailed in a dedicated paper [25].
Display Cavity Modes(Cin,’N’,10,’Airy’,1)
Displays the cavity eigenmodes. The function Calculate RT mat
must be run first to calculate the cavity kernel. With this function
one can display an arbitrary number of modes (by default the first
20) and also draw the Airy peak of the cavity with the command:
Display\_cavity\_modes(C1,’N’,30,’Airy’,1)
An example of how to use the function Display cavity modes is
shown in the script Example cavity eigenmodes.m
Display Scan(Cin)
Displays the scan from a cavity after the procedure Cavity scan
was run. By moving the cursor on the upper plot (circulating
power vs tuning), the profile of the optical modes can be checked
in the lower right plot.
Get Info(Cin)
Get info calculates the fields on resonance inside the cavity. The
function is also used to calculate the diffraction loss due to the
mirror finite size. Legacy function, it is recommended to use the
function Calculate Fields AC.
4.2.7 The class CavityN

CN = CavityN( I, D, E1)
This class introduces linear cavities with arbitrary number of mirrors. I
represents a vector of object Interfaces, D is a vector of distances and finally
E1 is the input laser field.
Two kinds of cavity could be defined:
A ring cavity where the laser beam is reflected on each mirror only once
during one round-trip (3- or 4-mirror mode-cleaner cavities fall in this
category). In that case, the length of the vector I is the same as the one
of D.
A folded cavity, where during one round-trip the laser beam is re-
flected twice by the intermediate mirrors (think recycling folded cavity
of LIGO). In that case, it has one more interface I than length D.
The distance D(n) is defined as the distance between the interfaces I(n)
and I(n+1). The functions suitable for the class CavityN are the same as for
the class Cavity1 without exception.
An example of how to use the class CavityN is shown in the script Exam-
ple 4mirrors.m
4.2.8 The class Mirror

This class is used to simulate optics with thick substrates. A mirror is thus
defined as 2 surfaces separated by a distance with a certain refractive index.
Typically, one surface is coated with an anti-reflective coating while the second
surface has a high reflectivity coating.
Similar to a cavity, the light can do several round-trips within the substrate
if the anti-reflection is not perfect. So the Mirror object can be used to
simulate the etalon effect within a substrate. It is not possible to set the
resonance condition in the substrate but one can scan the substrate length
over wavelength to check this effect.
Mirror object can be used with the class Cavity1 to form a cavity between
the 2 high reflectivity surfaces.
4.3. WHAT TO EXPECT IN THE FOLLOWING VERSIONS 77
4.3 What to expect in the following versions

Most of the code for the release V3.0 was frozen in September 2012. Some
additional functions have already been implemented and are little by little
moving in the official distribution. The motor behind most the new develop-
ment is the need to simulate accurately the off axis secondary beams in the
Advanced Virgo marginally stable recycling cavities.
Two main new features have already been implemented but not released:
Use of rectangular grid. It is possible to use grid with different size

and number of points in the horizontal and vertical directions. That is
useful to simulate tilted beams with large angle along one direction since
in that case a fine resolution is required. A special version of OSCAR
in 1D has also been made but may never get released.
Simulation of a dual recycled Michelson interferometer. A new

class has been defined to simulate a dual recycled Michelson interferom-
eter. That is done for marginally stable cavity but not yet released due
to a lack of comprehensive documentation. Available for people within
the Virgo collaboration.
Simulation birefringence.. To include 2D maps of birefringence mea-

sured in transmission.
If new functions are needed urgently and cannot wait for future versions,
you can contact directly the author.
Chapter 5
New examples of simulations
After the formal previous chapter, here is the most interesting part: the con-
crete examples. In this part we will see how easy it is to create simulations
with the new OSCAR, few lines of code are usually enough to get a result.
The examples are in the folder Examples.
5.1 Beam parameters after a thick lens

Before learning how to define cavities, we can already see how to propagate
a laser beam through a custom-made thick lens. The lens is bi-convex, made
of fused silica (n=1.45) and is 4 cm thick . The first surface has a radius of
1 km and the second 2 km. At the exit of the lens, we propagate the beam
further by 200 m and then measure its parameter. The commented script is
called Example thick lens.m and can be found in the OSCAR folder.
The first surface is defined in OSCAR by the line:

L1 = Interface(G1,-1000,0.10,1,0,1,1.45). Since the surface is convex
as seen from the incoming laser beam there is a minus sign. The second
argument is the clear aperture of the optic, then there are the transmission
and the loss (in power) and finally the two refractive index of the media on
either part of the interface.
To transmit the laser beam E1 through the interface, the command is sim-
ply E2 = Transmit_Reflect_Interface(E1,L1). Then the beam is propa-
gated along 4 cm with the command E2 = Propagate_E(E2,0.04) and finally
passes through the second interface.
At the end of the script, the laser beam parameter is displayed using the
command Fit_TEM00(E3). The condensed script for the transmission of the
79
80 CHAPTER 5. NEW EXAMPLES OF SIMULATIONS
thick lens is shown in the listing 5.1.
Listing 5.1: Example of OSCAR script to simulate a thick lens

G1 = Grid(256,0.3);
E1 = E Field(G1,0.02);
L1 = Interface(G1 ,−1000,0.10,1,0,1,1.45);
L2 = Interface(G1 ,2000,0.10,1,0,1.45,1);
E2 = Transmit Reflect Interface(E1,L1);

E2 = Propagate E(E2,0.04);
E2 = Transmit Reflect Interface(E2,L2);
E3 = Propagate E(E2,200);
Fit TEM00(E3);
At the end, the beam radius is measured to be 1.76283 cm and the wave-
front curvature -1765.36 m. To be compared with the result found using the
ABCD matrix for the same setup: Beam radius of 1.76283 cm and wavefront
curvature of -1763.79 m. So both results are in good agreement.
Since OSCAR 3.10, the thick lens can be made with an instance of the
class Mirror. This example has been updated accordingly.
5.2 Calculating diffraction loss and circulating

power
In this example, we will calculate the circulating power in a Fabry Perot cavity.
At the same time, we can also derive the diffraction loss due to the finite size
of the mirrors.
The Fabry Perot cavity is 1 km long and the input and end mirrors have
a radius of curvature of 2500 m. Both mirrors have a transmission of 2% and
no loss. The diameter of the mirror is set to 10 cm. The incident beam has a
beam radius of 2 cm and a radius wavefront curvature of 2500 m.
The 7 lines of the script to define the cavity and do the calculations can
be found in the listing 5.2. This script with additional commented lines can
be found in the OSCAR3.0 folder under the name Example Pcirc.m.
The script takes less than 10s to run on a modern laptop. After the
calculation, the script Display Results(C1) will return in the Matlab console:
5.3. SCAN OF A MISALIGNED CAVITY 81
Listing 5.2: Example of OSCAR script to calculate the circulating power

G1 = Grid(128,0.3);
E input = E Field(G1,’w’,0.02,’R’,−2500);
IM = Interface(G1,’RoC’,2500,’CA’,0.1,’T’,0.02);
EM = Interface(G1,’RoC’,2500,’CA’,0.1,’T’,0.02);
C1 = Cavity1(IM,EM,1000,E input);
C1 = Cavity Resonance Phase(C1);
C1 = Calculate Fields AC(C1);
Display Results(C1);
Found the phase for resonance in cavity: C1

Power in the input beam: 1 [W]
Circulating power: 49.2824 [W]
Transmitted power: 0.98563 [W]
Reflected power: 0.0125915 [W]
Round trip losses: 36.3807 [ppm]
5.3 Scan of a misaligned cavity

Using the same cavity parameters as in the previous example, we will now tilt
the end mirror in the vertical direction by 1 microradian. To see the excitation
of higher optical modes, we will display the circulating power over one free
spectral range. The script for that simulation is presented in the listing 5.3.
Listing 5.3: Example of OSCAR script to scan a cavity

G1 = Grid(128,0.3);
E input = E Field(G1,’w’,0.02,’R’,−2500);
EM = Interface(G1,’RoC’,2500,’CA’,0.1,’T’,0.02);
EM = Add Tilt(EM,1E−6,’y’);
C1 = Cavity Scan(C1);
Display Scan(C1);
The script takes around 2 minutes to run. The output is the Matlab figure
Circulating power vs resonance length
3
10
2
10
Position: 5.6605e−007
Power: 13.5972
1
10
0
10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Cavity detuning [m] x 10
−7
Cavity input beam Cavity circulating beam
−0.1 −0.1
−0.05 −0.05
0 0
0.05 0.05
0.1 0.1
0.15 0.15
−0.1 −0.05 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 −0.1 −0.05 0 0.05 0.1 0.15
Figure 5.1: Output window of the function Display scan(C1) with the cavity
scan over one FSR on top.
shown in the figure 5.1. The top plot is a cavity scan over one free spectral
range. We can notice 3 peaks : from left to right the first peak is a LG10 due
to imperfect mode-matching, the second is the mode HG10 and the third and
highest one is the fundamental mode. It is possible to move the cursor to see
the shape of the circulating field for a particular detuning.
5.4 Mirror maps and higher order modes

In this example, we will demonstrate how to use higher order optical modes
in conjunction with mirror maps. The mirror maps are stored in text files
under the form of a matrix which represents the mirror height fluctuations in
meters. In the maps given, the mirror curvature is not included (but it could
be done). The RMS of the mirror maps is around 2 nm, typical of very good
5.4. MIRROR MAPS AND HIGHER ORDER MODES 83
large mirrors.
The laser beam is now defined outside the cavity, so the cavity reflected
field can also be calculated. The script for this example is called Exam-
ple HOM with maps.m and is shown in the listing 5.4 without any comments.
Listing 5.4: Example of OSCAR script to calculate the reflected field from a
cavity with maps
G1 = Grid(512,0.4);
E input = E Field(G1,’w’,0.043,’R’,−1034,’mode’,’LG 3 3’);
EM = Interface(G1,’RoC’,1700,’CA’,0.4,’T’,2E−6);
param PSD = [0.02 −1.4];

Virtual map IM = Do Virtual Map(G1,param PSD);
Virtual map EM = Do Virtual Map(G1,param PSD);
IM = Add Map(IM,Virtual map IM,’reso’,G1.Step,’remove tilt focus’,0.150,’RMS’,1E−9,’verbose’,false);

EM = Add Map(EM,Virtual map EM,’reso’,G1.Step,’remove tilt focus’,0.150,’RMS’,1E−9,’verbose’,false);
C1.Propagation mat.Use DI = true;
C1 = Cavity Resonance Phase(C1);

C1 = Calculate Fields AC(C1);
Display Results(C1);
The line Virtual_map_IM = Do\_Virtual\_Map(G1,param_PSD); is used

to create a custom 2D height map to be later applied to the surface IM. The
map does not have to have the same size as the grid, since internally an in-
terpolation is done with Add_Map(). In that case the map is automatically
normalized to have a RMS of 1 nm. Regarding the sign convention, positive
values in the mirror maps reduce the length of the cavity (so equivalent to a
bump on the surface).
After the definition of the cavity and the calculation of the resonance
length, the command C1 = Calculate_Fields_AC(C1) is used to calculate
the circulating, reflected and transmitted fields from the cavity. The fields are
then stored in the instance C1 where they could be accessed later. To display
the result graphically the command Display_Results(C1) is then used. An
example of the output screen is shown in figure 5.2
Input field Circulating field

0.2 0.2
0.1 0.1
0 0
−0.1 −0.1
−0.2 −0.2
−0.2 −0.1 0 0.1 0.2 −0.2 −0.1 0 0.1 0.2
Reflected field Transmitted field

0.2 0.2
0.1 0.1
0 0
−0.1 −0.1
−0.2 −0.2
−0.2 −0.1 0 0.1 0.2 −0.2 −0.1 0 0.1 0.2
Figure 5.2: Output window of the function Display results(C1) when a LG33
mode is expected to circulate in a cavity with realistic mirrors.
5.5. PLOTTING A POUND-DREVER-HALL ERROR SIGNAL 85
Power of the fields circulating inside the cavity Demodulated PDH signal in reflection
0.25
Carrier Signal in phase
Lower sideband Signal in quadrature
1
0.2
10 Upper sideband
0.15
0
10 0.1
0.05
Signal [a.u.]
Power [W]
−1
10 0
−0.05
−2
10
−0.1
−3
−0.15
10
−0.2
−4
10 −0.25
1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
Cavity round trip phase shift Cavity round trip phase shift
Figure 5.3: Circulating power inside the cavity (left) and error signals in
reflection (right).
5.5 Plotting a Pound-Drever-Hall error signal

In this example, we will learn how to create sidebands and derive a Pound-
Drever-Hall locking signal in reflection. After the input laser E1 is defined,
a virtual phase modulator creates a pair of sidebands with the command:
E_input = Add_Sidebands(E_input,’Mod_freq’,6.7234E6,’Mod_depth’,0.3)
(sideband frequency: 6.7234 MHz and modulation depth: 0.3 . Then the fields
inside the cavity are computed for a given resonance phase.
To draw the PDH error signals, the reflected field from the cavity is de-
modulated to get the in phase and in quadrature signals. The simulation
is relatively long since for the cavity scan 200 points are taken. That takes
around 12 minutes on my laptop. A plot of the circulating power and the
reflected PDH error signal is shown in figure 5.3.
5.6 4-mirror linear cavity

This example, introduced with OSCAR 3.05, shows how to simulate a 4 mir-
rors cavity. The parameters to define the cavity are taken from the GEO600
output mode-cleaner. The script file is called Example 4 mirrors.m and is
rather self-explanatory for the regular user.
Eigen modes losses [m] Cavity circulating beam

1 −0.05
Detuning: 2.4193 −0.04

0.9 Loss: 0.95749
−0.03
0.8
−0.02
Round trip loss []
0.7 −0.01
0.6 0
0.01
0.5
0.02
0.4
0.03
0.3 0.04
0.2 0.05
−4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4 −0.05 0 0.05
Cavity detuning [rad]
Figure 5.4: Result of the command Display cavity modes().
5.7 Calculating the eigenmodes of a Fabry-Perot

cavity
Since OSCAR V3.10, it is possible to calculate the eigenmodes of a Fabry-
Perot or any linear cavity such as a mode-cleaner. This particularly useful to
check the degeneracy of a cavity or the clipping loss of higher order modes.
The example file is called Example cavity eigenmodes.m.
A typical display of the calculation of the cavity eigenmodes is shown in
figure 5.4. In this example file is also shown in the end how to display the
Airy peak of the different higher order modes of the cavity.
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[21] H. Yamamoto, “Acceleration of the FFT simulation of stable cavity.”

LIGO-T0900640-v2, 2010.
[22] F. Shen and A. Wang, “Fast-Fourier-transform based numerical inte-

gration method for the Rayleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction formula,” Appl.
Opt., vol. 45, pp. 1102–1110, 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 89
[23] H. Yamamoto, “1D PSD of mirror maps.” LIGO-T1100353-v1, 2011.
[24] R. Day, “A new FFT code: FOG Fast Fourier Transform Optical Simu-
lation of Gravitational Wave Interferometers.” LIGO G1200629-v1, 2012.
[25] N. Melchert, J. Degallaix, L. Hinz, and E. Reithmeier, “GPU implemen-

tation of FSR simulations: performance improvements and limitations,”
in Optics and Photonics for Information Processing XVI, vol. 12225,
p. 122250E, International Society for Optics and Photonics, SPIE, 2022.
Part III
Appendix
91
Appendix A
Analytical formulation of the

Gaussian beam propagation
using Fourier transform
In this appendix, we will see how it is possible to rediscover all the formulae
related to the laser beam propagation just by using the Fourier technique
explained in chapter 1. Basically, we will do by hand the three steps which
are numerically done in Matlab to propagate a Gaussian beam: first, do a 2D
Fourier transform of the laser beam, then add the phase shift in the frequency
domain and finally, take the inverse Fourier transform.
To facilitate the mathematical calculation, we will extensively use the fol-
lowing formula:
+∞
−b2
Z r
2
π
exp −ax + ibx dx = exp (A.1)
∞ a 4a
Let us consider a Gaussian beam E(x, y, z) of amplitude A. For simplifi-
cation we suppose the waist w0 of the beam to be located at z = 0. The beam
can be written:
2
x + y2

E(x, y, 0) = A exp − (A.2)
w02
We will now propagate the Gaussian beam along the z axis over a distance
d. To not complicate the calculation, we will just consider one transverse
dimension at first, for example the dimension along x since all the following
equations can be decoupled in the x/y dimensions.
93
APPENDIX A. ANALYTICAL FORMULATION OF THE GAUSSIAN
94 BEAM PROPAGATION USING FOURIER TRANSFORM
The first step is then to calculate the Fourier transform E(ν
e x , 0) of the
field E(x, 0):
Z +∞
x2

E(νx , 0) =
e A exp − 2 exp(j2πνx x)dx (A.3)
∞ w0
Using the formula A.1, the above equation becomes:
q
e x , 0) = A πw2 exp −(πνx w0 )2

E(ν 0 (A.4)
To simulate the propagation the electric field over a distance d, the proper
phase shift is added to Fourrier transform:
q
πw02 exp −(πνx w0 )2 exp(−jkd + jλπνx2 d)

E(ν
e x , d) = A (A.5)
Finally, we take the inverse Fourier transform of the equation A.5 to go

back to the familiar x space coordinate system:
Z +∞q
A πw02 exp −(πνx w0 )2 exp(−jkd + jλπνx2 d) exp(−j2πνx x)dνx

E(x, d) =
∞
q Z +∞
= A πw02 exp(−jkd) exp −(π 2 w02 − jλπd)νx2 − j2πxνx dνx

∞
−4π 2 x2

π
q r
= A πw0 2 exp(−jkd) exp
π 2 w02 − jπλd 4(π 2 w02 − jλπd)
 
2
s
1 x
=A λd
exp(−jkd) exp − 
1 − j πw2 w 1 − j λd2
2
0 0 πw0
(A.6)
We can now define the usual Raleigh range zr as:
πw02
zr = (A.7)
λ
By inserting the Raleigh range zr into A.6 and by adding the similar result
on the other y transverse dimension, we obtain:
 
1 
− x2 + y 2 
E(x, y, d) = A exp(−jkd) exp  (A.8)
1 − j zdr  
1
w02 1−j zd
r
95
Let us analyze now the two main constituents of equation A.8, the ex-
ponential and the complex factor in front of it. The complex number in the
exponential can be separated in its real and imaginary parts:
 
 
2 + y2) d
 x2 + y2  x2
+ y2 (x zr 
−
exp   = exp −
 −j

2 d2 2 d2
w02 1 w0 1 + z 2 w0 1 + z 2
1−j zd r r
r
 
x 2 + y2 (x 2 + y2)
= exp − 2
−j 
w02 1 + dz 2 w02 zdr + zdr (A.9)
r
 
2
x +y 2 2 2
(x + y ) 
= exp − −j
2 d2 2zr zr d
w0 1 + z 2 k d + zr
r
 
2
x +y 2 2 2
(x + y ) 
= exp − − jk 2

2d 1 + dzr2
d 2
w02 1 + z 2
r
We can now consider the factor in front equation A.8:

!1
2
1 1 d
A =A d2
exp j arctan (A.10)
1 − j zdr 1+ zr2
zr
Combining equations A.9 and A.10, we can deduce the familiar equations
governing the propagation of Gaussian beams:
2
x + y2 x2 + y 2

w0 d
E(x, y, d) = A exp − exp −jk d + + j arctan
w(d) w(d)2 2R(d) zr
(A.11)
With:
d2

w(d) = w0 1 + 2
zr
2
(A.12)
zr
R(d) = d 1 + 2
d
I found remarkable that by using the simple FFT steps to propagate the
beam we can rediscover all the usual equations: the normalisation factor, the
evolution of the beam radius and the wavefront radius of curvature as well
as the Gouy phase shift. The courageous readers can also do the calculations
presented here for the higher order modes in the Hermite-Gauss base.
Appendix B
Finesse script
The Finesse script [11] used to simulate a Fabry Perot cavity equivalent to the
one described in the table 2.1 is presented below. It is often extremely useful to
create some simple Finesse model to check the exactitude of OSCAR results
whenever possible. The script is also included in the OSCAR distribution
under the name P circ.kat in the folder Calculate Pcirc.
l i1 1 0 n0 # laser P=1W
gauss G1 i1 n0 0.017221 -517.112239 # Parameters for a beam radius 2cm
# and a wavefront RofC of -2000m
s s0 1n 1 n0 n1
m1 SITM1 1 0 0 n1 n2
s sITM2 1n 1.45 n2 nITM
m1 ITM2 0.005 50E-6 0 nITM ncav1 # IM transmission and loss
attr ITM2 Rc -2000
s s3 1000 ncav1 ncav2
m1 ETM 50E-6 50E-6 0 ncav2 n4 # EM transmission and loss

attr ETM Rc 2000
cav cav_mode ITM2 ncav1 ETM ncav2
maxtem 8
trace 10
phase 0
startnode n0
97
98 APPENDIX B. FINESSE SCRIPT
pd0 p_circ ncav1

pd0 p_trans n4
pd0 p_ref n1
xaxis ETM phi lin -233 -234 3600

yaxis abs
gnuterm NO
retrace off
Appendix C
Details of OSCAR 3.0 classes
The properties (i.e. parameters included in an object of a class) of the different

classes are described in following sections. Properties are not protected, so
they can be accessed and changed using: object name.properties (at your own
risk).
The name of the properties are usually self-explanatory and derived di-
rectly from OSCAR classic.
C.1 Class Grid
C.2 Class E Field
C.3 Class Prop operator
C.4 Class Interface
C.5 Class Mirror
C.6 Class Cavity1
C.7 Class CavityN
99
100 APPENDIX C. DETAILS OF OSCAR 3.0 CLASSES
Table C.1: Details of the properties of the class Grid
Properties Type Comments

Num point scalar, integer Should be a power of 2
Length scalar Length of one side of the grid (m)
Step scalar Step = Length / Num point
Half num point scalar, integer Half num point = Num point / 2
Vector vector, integer from 1 to Num point
Axis vector The scale for the grid
Axis FFT vector The spatial frequency scale
D2 X 2D matrix Horizontal scale in 2D
D2 Y 2D matrix Vertical scale in 2D
D2 square 2D matrix Square of the distance to the center
D2 r 2D matrix Distance from the center of the grid
D2 FFT X 2D matrix Horizontal FFT scale in 2D
D2 FFT Y 2D matrix Vertical FFT scale in 2D
Table C.2: Details of the properties of the class E Field

Grid Grid Grid where the beam is defined
Field 2D complex matrix The carrier electric field
Field SBl 2D complex matrix The lower sidebands
Field SBu 2D complex matrix The higher sidebands
Refractive index scalar Refractive index of the medium
Wavelength scalar The light wavelength
Frequency Offset scalar Frequency of the sidebands
Mode name string Family and mode number
k prop scalar Propagation constant
C.7. CLASS CAVITYN 101
Table C.3: Details of the properties of the class Prop operator

n scalar Refractive index of the media
mat 2D complex Propagation matrix
dist scalar Distance of propagation
Use DI logical Enable digital integration
mat DI 2D complex Propagation matrix for digital integration
Table C.4: Details of the properties of the class Interface

Grid Grid Grid where the beam is defined
surface 2D matrix The height of the surface
mask 2D matrix of 0 and 1 The aperture of the optic
T scalar Transmission in power
L scalar Loss in power
n1 scalar The first refractive index
n2 scalar The second refractive index
√
t scalar Amplitude transmission T
p
r scalar Amplitude reflectivity 1 − (T + L)
Table C.5: Details of the properties of the class Mirror

I HR Interface First surface
I AR Interface Second surface
length substrate scalar Length of the substrate
RT inside integer Number of round-trips
n substrate scalar Refractive index of the substrate
r scalar Reflectivity
102 APPENDIX C. DETAILS OF OSCAR 3.0 CLASSES
Table C.6: Details of the properties of the class Cavity1

I input Interface Input mirror surface
I end Interface End mirror surface
Length scalar Length of the cavity
Laser in E Field Input laser beam
Laser start on input logical Define where the input beam is given
Resonance phase complex scalar Phase adjustment to bring the cavity on resonance
Cavity scan all field vector of E Field Store all the E field after each round-trip
Cavity scan param vector 3 values to define how to scan the cavity
Cavity phase param scalar Number of round-trips used to find the resonance
Cavity scan R vector Cavity circulating power scan over one FSR
Cavity scan RZ vector Zoom of the scan around the cavity resonance
Cavity EM mat 2D complex matrix Cavity round-trip kernel
Propagation mat Prop operator Pre-computed propagation matrix
Field circ E Field Cavity circulating field
Field ref E Field Cavity reflected field
Field trans E Field Cavity transmitted field
C.7. CLASS CAVITYN 103
Table C.7: Details of the properties of the class CavityN

I array Vector Interface Mirror surfaces
d array Vector Prop operator Distance between mirrors
Nb mirror Integer Number of mirrors
Laser in E Field Input laser beam
Laser start on input logical Define where the input beam is given
Resonance phase complex scalar Resonance cavity tuning
Cavity scan all field vector of E Field Store all the E field after each round-trip
Cavity scan param vector 3 values to define how to scan the cavity
Cavity phase param scalar Nb of round-trips used to find the resonance
Cavity scan R vector Store the FSR scan
Cavity scan RZ vector Zoom of the scan around the cavity resonance
Cavity E mat 2D complex matrix Cavity round-trip kernel
Propagation mat array; Vector of array Pre-computed propagation matrices
Field circ E Field Cavity circulating field
Field ref E Field Cavity reflected field
Field trans E Field Cavity transmitted field
Appendix D
They have found OSCAR

useful...
... and they mention it. A list of publications where OSCAR is quoted:
D.1 Thesis
1. Degallaix, J. (2006). Compensation of strong thermal lensing in ad-
vanced interferometric gravitational waves detectors, University of West-
ern Australia). Editor note: Of course, when it all started.
2. Granata, M. (2011). Optical development for second-and third-generation

gravitational-wave detectors: stable recycling cavities for advanced virgo
and higher-order Laguerre-Gauss modes, Université Paris Diderot and
Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata.
3. Bonnand, R. (2012). The Advanced Virgo gravitational wave detector:

Study of the optical design and development of the mirror, Université
Claude Bernard Lyon I
4. Fang, Q. (2015). High Optical Power Experiments and Parametric In-

stability in 80 m Fabry-P erot Cavities, University of Western Australia.
5. Straniero, N. (2015). Étude, développement et caractérisation des miroirs

des interféromètres laser de 2ème génération dédiés à la détection des
ondes gravitationnelles, Université Claude Bernard-Lyon I
6. Ott, K. (2016). Towards a squeezing-enhanced atomic clock on a chip,

Université Pierre et Marie Curie.
105
106 APPENDIX D. THEY HAVE FOUND OSCAR USEFUL...
7. Favier, P. (2017). Etude et conception d’une cavité Fabry-Perot de haute

finesse pour la source compacte de rayons X ThomX, Paris Saclay
8. Blair, C. (2017). Parametric Instability in Gravitational Wave Detectors

(Doctoral dissertation, University of Western Australia
9. Metzdorff, R. (2019). Refroidissement de résonateurs mécaniques macro-

scopiques proche de leur état quantique fondamental, Laboratoire Kastler
Brossel
10. Hardwick, T. (2019). High Power and Optomechanics in Advanced

LIGO Detectors, Louisiana State University
D.2 Articles
1. Barriga, P., Bhawal, B., Ju, L., & Blair, D. G. (2007). Numerical cal-
culations of diffraction losses in advanced interferometric gravitational
wave detectors. JOSA A, 24(6), 1731-1741. Editor note: at that time
the code has no name.
2. Crouzil, T., & Perrin, M. (2013). Dynamics of a chain of optically

coupled micro droplets, J. Europ. Opt. Soc. Rap. Public. 8, 13079
3. Gatto, A., Tacca, M., Kéfélian, F., Buy, C., & Barsuglia, M. (2014).
Fabry-Pérot-Michelson interferometer using higher-order Laguerre-Gauss
modes. Physical Review D, 90(12), 122011.
4. Zhao, C., Ju, L., Fang, Q., Blair, C., Qin, J., Blair, D., ... & Yamamoto,
H. (2015). Parametric instability in long optical cavities and suppression
by dynamic transverse mode frequency modulation. Physical Review D,
91(9), 092001.
5. Straniero, N., Degallaix, J., Flaminio, R., Pinard, L., & Cagnoli, G.
(2015). Realistic loss estimation due to the mirror surfaces in a 10
meters-long high finesse Fabry-Perot filter-cavity. Optics express, 23(16),
21455-21476.
6. Allocca, A., Gatto, A., Tacca, M., Day, R. A., Barsuglia, M., Pillant, G.,
... & Vajente, G. (2015). Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss interferometry
for gravitational-wave detectors with in situ mirror defects compensa-
tion. Physical Review D, 92(10), 102002.
D.2. ARTICLES 107
7. Ott, K., Garcia, S., Kohlhaas, R., Schüppert, K., Rosenbusch, P., Long,
R., & Reichel, J. (2016). Millimeter-long fiber Fabry-Perot cavities.
Optics express, 24(9), 9839-9853.
8. Capocasa, E., Barsuglia, M., Degallaix, J., Pinard, L., Straniero, N.,
Schnabel, R., ... & Flaminio, R. (2016). Estimation of losses in a 300 m
filter cavity and quantum noise reduction in the KAGRA gravitational-
wave detector. Physical Review D, 93(8), 082004.
9. Blair, C., Gras, S., Abbott, R., Aston, S., Betzwieser, J., Blair, D.,
... & Grote, H. (2017). First demonstration of electrostatic damping
of parametric instability at Advanced LIGO. Physical review letters,
118(15), 151102.
10. Wittmuess, P., Piehler, S., Dietrich, T., Ahmed, M. A., Graf, T., &
Sawodny, O. (2016). Numerical modeling of multimode laser resonators.
JOSA B, 33(11), 2278-2287.
11. Ma, Y., Liu, J., Ma, Y. Q., Zhao, C., Ju, L., Blair, D. G., & Zhu, Z. H.
(2017). Thermal modulation for suppression of parametric instability in
advanced gravitational wave detectors. Classical and Quantum Gravity,
34(13), 135001.
12. Capocasa, E., Guo, Y., Eisenmann, M., Zhao, Y., Tomura, A., Arai,
K., ... & Somiya, K. (2018). Measurement of optical losses in a high-
finesse 300 m filter cavity for broadband quantum noise reduction in
gravitational-wave detectors. Physical Review D, 98(2), 022010.
13. Jia, Y., Huang, R., Lan, Y., Ren, Y., Jiang, H., & Lee, D. (2019).
Reversible Aggregation and Dispersion of Particles at a Liquid–Liquid
Interface Using Space Charge Injection. Advanced Materials Interfaces,
6(5), 1801920.
14. Hardwick, T., Hamedan, V. J., Blair, C., Green, A. C., & Vander-Hyde,
D. (2020). Demonstration of dynamic thermal compensation for para-
metric instability suppression in Advanced LIGO. Classical and Quan-
tum Gravity.
15. Wu, B., Blair, C., Ju, L., Zhao, C,. (2020) Contoured thermal deforma-
tion of mirror surface for detuning parametric instability in an optical
cavity. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 37(12):125003.
108 APPENDIX D. THEY HAVE FOUND OSCAR USEFUL...
16. Wang, H., Amoudry, L., Cassou, K., Chiche, R., Degallaix, J., Dupraz,
K., Huang, W., Martens, A., Michel, C., Monard, H., Nutarelli, D.
(2020) Prior-damage dynamics in a high-finesse optical enhancement
cavity. Applied Optics, 59(35):10995-1002.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the users of the code and especially all the people who
have helped in the development, in particular : Massimo Galimberti (impres-
sive work for the Zernike implementation and the ZYGO .dat file interpreter),
Francois Bondu (for generating maps from a 1D PSD), Luc Di Gallo, Francois
Labaye and Richard Day for all the interesting discussions.
The GPU coding was initiated, pushed and later optimised by Nils Melchert.
Aline Cahuzac corrected the mistakes in this manual, the remaining ones
were added later by me.
109

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OSCAR

A Matlab-based optical FFT code

THE SOFTWARE AND DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED AS IT IS WITHOUT ANY

MATLAB is a trademark of MathWorks Inc., MA, USA.

1 Principle of the FFT code 1

I OSCAR V1: the classic version 21

2 The OSCAR code in details 23

II OSCAR V3: the Object-Oriented version 59

4 The big changes 61

5 New examples of simulations 79

A Analytical formulation of the Gaussian beam propagation

C Details of OSCAR 3.0 classes 99

D They have found OSCAR useful... 105

Principle of the FFT code

1.1 Why OSCAR ?

1.1.1 Origin of OSCAR

1.1.2 Which results could I get from OSCAR ?

 calculate diffraction loss and eigenmodes of cavity for arbitrary mirror

 calculate the effects of imperfect optics, due to the micro-roughness of

Even more complicated configuration could be simulated such as dual re-

1.1.3 What OSCAR is not for

1.2 Propagation of an optical field

Where fei is the Fourier transform of the function fi . The function t →

Figure 1.1: Propagation of a plane wave along the z axis.

1.2.1 Propagation of a plane wave

u(x, y, 0) = exp(−jkx x − jky y) (1.2)

u(x, y, 0) = exp(−j2π(νx x+νy y)) with νx = kx /(2π) and νy = ky /(2π) (1.3)

If u is written as shown in equation (1.3), it is easy to recognize u as a

u(x, y, d) = exp(−jkx x − jky y − jkz d) (1.4)

and kz  ky , then kz can be written as:

So we can rewrite equation (1.4) as:

u(x, y, d) = u(x, y, 0) exp(−j(k − λπ(νx2 + νy2 ))d) (1.7)

The equation (1.7) is the foundation of the FFT propagation code. It

We noticed in equation (1.3), that the elementary plane wave u(x, y, 0)

1.2.2 Propagation of an arbitrary field

With E(νe x , νy ) the complex amplitude of the component of the field E

Combining equations (1.7), (1.8) and (1.9) , we know how to propagate in

1. Decomposition of the field E(x, y, 0) into a sum of elementary plane

2. Propagation of each plane wave, which is equivalent to adding a phase

E(ν e x , νy , 0) exp(−j(k − λπ(νx2 + νy2 ))d)

3. Re-composition of the electric field from the propagated plane waves.

1.2.3 My first Matlab FFT code

Listing 1.1: Discretization of a Gaussian beam

Grid.vector = 1:Grid.Num point; % Grid.vector = 1 2 3 ... Grid.Num point

Field .Gaussian = zeros(Grid.Num point,Grid.Num point,’double’);

% Fill the matrix representing the ( real ) Gaussian beam:

dimensions N × N , the spatial frequency 0 (the average component) is located

The propagation of an electric field using a FFT code is an extremely pow-

We arrive now at the end of this section, which is dedicated to under-

Listing 1.2: The code used to propagate the matrix Field.Start

% Distance of propagation in meters

% Spatial frequency of the pixels in the Fourier space

% Define the propagation matrix

Mat propagation = zeros(Grid.Num point,Grid.Num point,’double’);

for m = 1:Grid.Num point

Mat propagation(m,n) = exp(i*(−Laser.k prop*Distance prop + ...

%−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−− Propagate the field −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−

% As a result Field .End represents Field.Start propagated over 100 meters

1.3 Adding realistic optics

1.3.1 Arbitrary wavefront distortion

Eo (x, y) = Ei (x, y) exp (−jk∆OP L(x, y)) (1.16)

As we can see the effect of the wavefront distortion can be implemented

Figure 1.4: Example of the optical path difference induced by 1 km radius

calculate diffraction loss and eigenmodes of cavity for arbitrary mirror

calculate the effects of imperfect optics, due to the micro-roughness of

and kz ky , then kz can be written as:

Mat propagation(m,n) = exp(i(−Laser.k propDistance prop + ...

Output = Wave field .* exp(i * Wave mirrorLaser.k prop) reflectivity .* Mirror.mask;

A wonderful article to understand how to create a simple and robust FFT

Techniques to build a FFT code (and some other optical numerical

Propagate Field.m is a script called at the beginning of Find resonance length.m.

Build Field Cavity.m is a function called intensively by Find resonance length.m.

Calculate power.m is a simple function which takes for input a 2D elec-

If during a simulation, the plot of the circulating power as a function of

The number of peaks in the plot is directly proportional to the mode-

Phase shift = exp(iLaser.k prop Length.reso zoom);

Beam parameter.m is a function which takes for parameter a complex

Calculate power.m is a simple function which takes a 2D field and re-

CreateField.m is the first script called in OSCAR to initialize all the

CreateMirror.m is the script to create the matrix representing the wave-

Find resonance length.m is used to find the microscopic de-tuning re-