Available Modeling Software

User licenses for various powerful software packages are sold by RP Photonics. You find detailed descriptions on the RP Software pages.

RP Photonics offers the development of specialized software for customers. Possible functions of such software are

• various kinds of simulations, e.g. of laser and amplifier dynamics
• other calculations in optics, e.g. concerning material dispersion, interferometers, Kramers-Kronig relations, etc.
• specialized data acquisition and processing, e.g. calculation of noise spectra from data recorded in the time domain

In any case, RP Photonics can provide software with an easy to use interface. For example, input values can be entered in forms, output values are nicely formatted, results can be graphically shown, etc. Of course, high quality documentation is provided. To get an impression of that quality, have a look at the contents of the manual for RP Fiber Power.

If you are interested, contact RP Photonics Consulting to find out what can be done.

Even though the customers will not use this software themselves, it is good to know what kind of software is available for use in consulting projects. Therefore, the most important software is briefly summarized in the following subsections. As the modeling is done by Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta, who is the author of all the mentioned software and has a deep experience in modeling, results can be obtained very quickly and efficiently, and are very reliable. Another advantage is that the customer does then not require own software licenses and does not have to invest any time to learn the handling of the software.

Software for the following applications is available:

• Calculation of dynamics in lasers and amplifiers, such as Q-switching dynamics, spiking, pulse build-up in regenerative amplifiers, etc.
• Calculation of different orders of chromatic material dispersion from refractive index data, or of dispersion of prism pairs
• Design of refractive index profiles of fibers
• Calculations concerning phase matching of nonlinear processes (e.g. for an automatic systematic search for all possible phase-matching configurations in nonlinear crystal materials)
• General optics calculations, e.g. concerning nonlinearities, soliton effects, optical filters, interference effects, Kramers-Kronig relations, etc.

These are just examples; many other things can be quickly and reliably calculated using existing software.

Dr. Paschotta's software is not only powerful, but has a very high quality in various respects:

• The underlying equations are based on a very decent physical understanding and the knowledge of relevant scientific literature.
• The software design has been carefully planned from the beginning, enabling e.g. easy future expansions without changing the concept.
• The programs have been carefully validated in many details, e.g. by comparison with analytically calculated results for special situations, or by detailed comparison with results from other researchers.
• The user interfaces are so flexible that it is never necessary to include project-specific details in the source code.

Before you try to develop such software yourself, consider the risks associated with required development time (always more than originally expected!), non-ideal algorithms (compromising accuracy and/or computation time) and errors (possibly misleading your development team). And note that software is only one requirement for numerical modeling: even more importantly, you need a detailed physical understanding, knowledge of possible approaches and mathematical techniques, experience concerning how to make a model useful, etc. Having a real expert for such jobs is certainly worth a lot.

Note that software is just one part of the modeling issue; read the page on modeling for information on other aspects. Instead of purchasing software licenses, you may use the consultancy of RP Photonics.