Learning Forum

[cyrilbernerd]

Dear all,

My research group is planning on buying a Lumerical-Ansys license in order to simulate free-space lasers and nonlinear systems. Lumerical seems to be widely used for integrated optics mainly, and I was wondering if it is well suited for free-space studies and system designs.

As an example, I would like to be able to simulate the Sum Frequency Generation (SFG) of two laser beams inside a nonlinear crystal. The phase-matching condition, crystal orientation etc can easily be calculated, but we would like to be able to determine the conversion efficiency depending on different parameters (such as potential misalignment, orientation of the bulk crystal if the cut is not perfectly parallel to the phase-matching angle, acceptance effect on the generated spatial beam and spectrum...), and especially in the case where the undepleted pump approximation can not be assumed.

Thus, a 3D study of the two incoming beams propagation, their nonlinear interaction with the crystal, and the propagation of the generated beam is necessary.

Your insights and help on this subject will help us determine if Lumerical is well suited for tour work.

Regards.

[Guilin Sun]

We have examples for SHG and crystals. However, FDTD works best for device in wavelength scales, eg from 10^-2 to 10^2 order of wavelength. Too large the device compared to wavelength creates serious challenges on memory, speed and accuracy. I would suggest that you try the software: https://www.lumerical.com/evaluate-for-free/
just set the device with the specified source, check the "Resources" and see if your computer can handle the memory requirement:



Nonlinear material models: Standard optical permittivity material models in FDTD and MODE
Nonlinear examples are here, https://support.lumerical.com/hc/en-us/sections/360007004493-Nonlinear
in particular:
Harmonic generation with a chi2 material
Four wave mixing with Kerr nonlinear material